If you think we have similar personalities, people look alike, new study finds

DOI:10.1016 / j.cognition.2021.104889

Explanation

The results of a study published in the journal Cognition showed that knowledge about a person's personality can influence their perception of facial identity and bias them toward irrelevant identities.

In many of the face pairs tested in the study, if "Vladimir Putin," "Justin Bieber" and others have similar personalities in the minds of the participants, they will appear visually similar even if there is no physical similarity.

As an illustration of the basic scientific understanding of how face recognition works in the brain, the researchers suggest that prior social knowledge as well as visual cues of faces play an active role in face recognition.

To provide evidence for this causal relationship, the researchers determined whether the effect would extend to individuals they had not previously encountered and showed images of other Caucasian males that participants reported not knowing well. Then, if participants were informed that the personalities of the people in the photos were similar, they perceived the similarities to their own faces.

The findings went on to show that perceptions of facial identity are distorted not only by facial features such as eyes and chin, but also by social knowledge about other people, biasing them toward other identities, despite the fact that those identities are missing.