Every facial feature – such as narrow eyes, big nose, long chin, thick eyebrows etc. – has a psychological meaning. You see, facial features and personality traits – such as gifts, and talents – go hand in hand. Face reading is more than just learning about a person’s characteristics.
A pair of Princeton psychology researchers has developed a computer program that allows scientists to analyze better than ever before what it is about certain human faces that makes them look either trustworthy or fearsome. In doing so, they have also found that the program allows them to construct computer-generated faces that display the most trustworthy or dominant faces possible.
“Humans seem to be wired to look to faces to understand the person’s intentions,” said Todorov, who has spent years studying the subtleties of the simple plane containing the eyes, nose and mouth. “People are always asking themselves, ‘Does this person have good or bad intentions?'”
A trustworthy face, at its most extreme, has a U-shaped mouth and eyes that form an almost surprised look. An untrustworthy face, at its most extreme, is an angry one with the edges of the mouth curled down and eyebrows pointing down at the center. The least dominant face possible is one resembling a baby’s with a larger distance between the eyes and the eyebrows than other faces. A threatening face can be obtained by averaging an untrustworthy and a dominant face.
Following imagery should give you a better understanding:
The research raises questions about whether the brain is equipped with a special mechanism for “reading” or evaluating faces, he said. Some studies of infants have shown that, when offered a choice between looking at a random pattern and one resembling a human face, infants prefer the face. And there is evidence that face-seeking is deeply rooted in both the psyche and evolution as the amygdala, a primitive region of the brain, is stimulated when someone spies a scary face.
Source: princeton.edu