And to me, when you look at people’s faces you’re seeing their characters. It’s scary: we’re all too naked that way, not just literally, in that we don’t conceal our faces with clothes, but figuratively, in that somehow our true characters get stamped on the front of our heads like a map. An obvious map of our souls – I don’t think it’s appropriate, to tell the truth. Like living in a nudist colony. It must be an evolutionary thing, adaptive somehow no doubt, but looking in the mirror I could wish for a nicer face myself – meaning a nicer personality, I guess. And when I look around I’m thinking, Oh no! Too much information! We’d be better off wearing veils like Muslim women and showing only our eyes!
Kim Stanley Robinson: New York 2140
It’s a taboo subject: How much about a person can we glean from their face?
According to Wikipedia, physiognomy, the practice of assessing a person’s character or personality from their face, is a pseudoscience.
I think that this statement, without qualification, is too strong. It’s obviously true that faces convey some information. We can tell how well someone takes care of their hair and skin. Do they have facial tattoos? Surely that means something too. Clinical geneticists are trained to diagnose specific genetic disorders from facial features, and there are algorithms that can do the same from photos. Many of those disorders are associated with behaviors and intelligence outside the normal range.
There clearly is some information, but what its limits and the failure modes of associating it with character or personality are, is far from obvious.
Nehaveigur 