I haven't been blogging lately because Shelley and I have been getting the new blog ready to go public on March 1st. However... I read this crap on CNN and got so irritated that I had to post it.
Evidently CNN feels that people who measure peoples facial features and predict personality characteristics is both legitimate science and worth reporting to the unknowing populace. This is some of the most ridiculous and irresponsible reporting I have ever seen. It's nearly as bad as a reporter writing that mercury in vaccines causes Autism.
Here's the basic gist:
If the "personology" believers had their way, they'd want you to judge every book by its cover. Well, actually, they'd want you to judge every person by his or her facial features. Because practitioners of personology, which is a form of face reading, believe the features on our face tell, literally, the inside story of what kind of person we are.The theory of reading personality traits in facial features dates back to Aristotle.
Nobody is more passionate about this facial fact-finding than the president of Face Language International, Naomi Tickle (her real name). Tickle has devoted her life to the study of personology, and she informs us in a lovely British accent that this is no fleeting New-Age fad.
Ms. Tickle is correct that this is no new age fad. It is a full blown scam that has persisted since the beginning of recorded history. It is as bad as phrenology, hand writing analysis, or anything that measures body features that have no direct influence on personality. Of course if you're morbidly obese and/or horrendously ugly that is going to affect your personality because of the way the public will treat you... but give me a break! This stuff needs to go the way of phrenology and die...quickly. CNN should be ashamed to report this kind of crap.
Well wait up Steve... let's see whether her constructs make any sense. Maybe she has something going?
So what are there traits that Tickle is talking about?Well, for example, she says "Somebody who has very close-set eyes is very good with detail. They don't like being interrupted, and they don't like people being late. They like people to be on time.
"The flip side of that," she adds, "is they can focus on things that aren't working till it becomes bigger than life.
A person with wide-set eyes is much more laid back, she continued. "They are the multi-task people. They're the ones that say, 'Oh I can do this and I can do that and I can do that as well,' and because of this behavior, they have a tendency to run late."
Nope. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. What kind of mechanism could possibly link these things? On the other hand maybe there actually is some evidence.
...the theory goes back much further than the 1920s. In fact, it dates back to Aristotle, who wrote a treatise on physiognomy, or the idea that one's temperament can be discerned from his or her outward features.
This later morphed into an odder head-reading trend known as the criminal head bump indicator, or phrenology. But don't lump (ahem) these items in with personology.Tickle says her method goes by the numbers. "We actually measure the eye to determine the distance," she says. "We measure the width of the eye, and we measure the space between them to see which is the bigger of the two. And so if the eye is bigger than the space between the eyes, this person is very tolerant and very good with details."
She asserts that "thousands and thousands of people" report 100 percent accuracy on the personology analysis.
100% Accuracy and a long history!? Wow! She must be totally right then. Alright first lets throw out the history thing. There was a long history of slave trade and lynching - that's certainly not legitimate. And now for that 100% accuracy. Have any of you scientists encountered any sort of manipulation at all that has given rise to 100% success rate? My toilet doesn't even flush at 100%
So Ms. Tickle and CNN... go away and stop leading poor people on.
Comments
"We actually measure the eye..." I have a photo in my office of a very precise phrenological measurement device. It looks a bit like an old-fashioned hair drier from hell, with pistons pointing through it to measure the skull in dozens of precise locations. Precise measurement cannot be the factor that discriminates phrenology from "personology".
On the other hand, research into the Barnum effect (or Forer effect) shows that the more precisely we measure (whether in astrology,using not just sun sign, but day, place, and hour of birth--or in personality, using a larger number of questions on a Myers-Briggs inventory), the greater the confidence in the self-evaluated results will be. Subjective validation cannot be the touchstone for determining the worth of any personality test.
Posted by: Anon | February 24, 2008 10:32 AM
Has CNN reported on the newest findings in phrenological research? Palmistry? Reflexology?
Look, there is no editorial mandate from above to put any real news on the news shows, so why not goof around? It's lots easier. And, when serving up woo, the guest will do most of the talking for you.
Posted by: Nelson Muntz | February 24, 2008 10:46 AM
Yesterday at lunch I saw a woman reading "Body Language for Dummies". Yup, for dummies. She told the waitress that she can see she is "open and friendly". Blarrrgggh.
Posted by: Coturnix | February 24, 2008 11:58 AM
on the bright side this could be a boon for the industry of retrophrenology...
think of the joys of a second career where you get to hit stupid people on the head with hammers...
though that said, on the sad side, think of what this will do to the facial reconstruction industry. "could you make me more 'friendly/personable/determined/decisive'?"
Posted by: peter | February 24, 2008 1:31 PM
It is as bad as phrenology, hand writing analysis, or anything that measures body features that have no direct influence on personality. Of course if you're morbidly obese and/or horrendously ugly that is going to affect your personality because of the way the public will treat you...
In the first sentence, you speak as if trait A has to "have direct influence" on trait B in order for information about the value of A to give you a better guess about the value of harder-to-observe B. That's just wrong -- ever hear of correlation? You have, as you show in the second sentence, which concedes that knowing someone's physical appearance provides some -- rather than zero -- information about their personality.
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. What kind of mechanism could possibly link these things?
Textbook case of the Argument from Incredulity and Laziness of Imagination, followed by:
On the other hand maybe there actually is some evidence.
Showing off one's self-contradictions is best left to Walt Whitman poetry, not science reporting.
Look, if you disagree with her particular claims, that's fine. But you're taking a broad swipe at a research program -- to determine to what extent, if any, physical appearance provides information about personality. That's an empirical matter to be settled by investigation, however informal, not by spitting it out of your mouth just because it leaves a bad taste (the way Creationists reject evolution).
To take a trivial example: there are sex differences in the personality traits Neuroticism and Agreeableness (about 0.4 SD and 0.6 SD, favoring females in both -- search PubMed for Costa, Terraciano, "gender differences" personality). So I have a pretty good idea that when I see a female face, she's likely to be more Agreeable than disagreeable.
To take a less trivial example, people with different 2D : 4D digit ratios have differing temperaments. Here, digit ratio has zero direct influence on personality, but they correlate because both traits are influenced by levels of fetal testosterone.
Now, I don't know how far these results go -- for one, I haven't done any research on them, and for another, I haven't read through all of the literature. But neither have you, or you would've given us a list of studies for and against the personality-appearance debate. Just lazy.
Posted by: agnostic | February 24, 2008 2:49 PM
In fact, go search google or pubmed or psychinfo or whatever, and find whatever information you can about whether the width of the eyes tells us anything about personality, or any of her other specific claims.
That way, we can partially resolve the debate, rather than saying, "I believe in that" or "I don't believe in that."
Posted by: agnostic | February 24, 2008 2:54 PM
Sad, because this brings to mind -- and yet is very different from -- Paul Eckman's work, which looks to be legit.
Posted by: jope | February 24, 2008 2:59 PM
Eh? Legitimacy? Where did that come into this? The slave trade and lynching are morally reprehensible but they certainly "worked". If you want a cogent example of how a long application history doesn't necessarily demonstrate validity you need look no further than the old stand by astrology. Comparing this "personology" nonsense to the slave trade or lynching makes a good case for a new rule to parallel Godwin's Law.
Simply put, if Tickle has evidence for this stuff then let's see it. Until then, shame on CNN for reporting such unsupported silliness as if it were science.
Posted by: Alexandra | February 24, 2008 3:31 PM
"ever hear of correlation?" -agnostic
I have a bear-repelling rock to sell you.
Posted by: Brian | February 24, 2008 3:45 PM
"so I have a pretty good idea that when I see a female face, she's likely to be more Agreeable than disagreeable." -aggie
You also know this if you see boobs (no face required!). Steve, we should become boobologists!
Posted by: Brian | February 24, 2008 3:47 PM
The idea seems vastly overreaching, but I'd like to see data on whether you can infer anything about Sonic hedgehog or BMP pathway genes from the separation of the eyes, and in turn whether you can use that to make any prediction at all about mental traits.
No matter what, it should be a very weak effect.
Posted by: Mike S. | February 24, 2008 8:50 PM
Agnostic, clearly... you have never read this blog before. This isn't serious science commentary. I'm not here to do research for you. If you care so much go out and find the papers yourself.
Posted by: Steve Higgins | February 25, 2008 12:28 AM
Some personality traits have a degree of correlation with levels of attractiveness, most likely through self fulfilling effects of differential treatment in socialization.
I have noticed some thinking to the effect that this justifies some rather crude stereotypes, but that is the result of innumeracy and fallacious thinking. On an individual level a probabilistic inference like that is very error prone, however most flirting with these ideas have no numerical basis for their judgements - they have simply converted a reported tendency into a concrete expectation, and that expectation becomes immune to internal criticism through cognitive biases that affect all nonscientific reasoning.
This is part of the a deeper issue with reporting of scientific results to the media. The meat of analysis is completely lost in news reports and there is a tendency to be provocative. The better reports present alternative explanations but many uncritically reproduce conclusions that read like a press release and investigators are complicit in exaggeration because it makes them seem more important and relevant (the article referred to in the original post here is of course full of much unscientific nonsense)
Posted by: quidnunc | February 25, 2008 1:59 AM
I can't speak to the Tickle Method or personology in general, but there might, possibly, be something to a relationship between morphology and behavior, albeit not individually.
What I'm getting at is the Siberia farm-fox study with domesticating silver foxes. The gist is that as they used selective breeding for less aggressive traits, they also saw morphological changes appear, like broader heads and loss of musky odor. But the sense of it I get is a correlation of species features to behaviors in a broad sense, not on an individual level.
Posted by: Mitch Harden | February 25, 2008 1:43 PM
I'm kinda sad that Agnostic never came back. This blog needs more 18-year-old posters.
Posted by: Brian | February 28, 2008 11:48 AM
That's b/c I deleted their last post for being too belligerent ;)
Posted by: Steve Higgins | February 29, 2008 12:01 AM
haha, I guess that's what happens when people call you out for being stupid.
Posted by: Brian | February 29, 2008 1:36 AM
hahah.. I'm ok with that.. but it has to be phrased appropriately. If it's not constructive criticism it gets deleted.
Posted by: Steve Higgins | February 29, 2008 8:07 AM