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Anyone know a deep study or write-up on trustworthy faces and their characteristics? Or have any thoughts on this topic generally?
My intuition is that trustworthy faces usually have larger eyes and also less tense eyes. For some reason people who tense their eyes widely come off as less trustworthy to me. I think they are also more expressive and “reactive” generally. Think of the actors Paul Rudd or Timothee Chalamet (just for common facial references). These faces seem deeply trustworthy to me in a way that I don’t find in a John Krasinski. I don’t think attractiveness is biasing me here, as I would also find Steve Buscemi and Michael Cera trustworthy.
I wonder if trustworthiness is correlated to inability to lie well. And perhaps also to “emotional response reactivity” — if your face reacts to information stimuli immediately it becomes difficult to lie. Something that gives me an uncanny feeling is watching Eastern Europeans communicate without expressiveness. Cultural differences blah blah blah aside, how can you possibly gauge if someone is trustworthy if everyone holds an expression-less face? And yeah this is abused by sociopaths who cultivate charisma and expression on purpose, but I think these people are easy to spot due to facial tension and pauses after stimuli.
If there’s a way to measure trustworthy faces with high accuracy then we should probably be putting these people in all of our important leadership and security positions.
Being honest is a lot less mentally taxing than being a liar. Maybe there's something about the amount of tension in someone's face? Or it could be something as simple as people with bigger eyes seem more honest because they remind us of innocent babies? Human preference for neoteny is pretty well attested to in other contexts. I notice men with "honest faces" tend to be fat, non-threatening guys with large, expressive eyes and a wide smile.
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I looked at the photographs of the people you mentioned, expecting to see an Eastwood/Biden-like permasquint on Krasinski, but I guess I have no idea what you mean, being an expressionless Eastern European.
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If I didn't know who Michael Cera was, I wouldn't leave my girlfriend alone with him, as I'd think he'd try to fuck her and she'd get creeped out and upset. I wouldn't leave her alone with Timothee Chalamet, as I'd think he'd try to fuck her - and succeed.
Krasinski looks more trustworthy to me than either. Agreed on Rudd and Buscemi though.
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Regarding your policy prescription at the end, I could easily see this backfiring if trustworthiness is also correlated with weakness or a people-pleaser disposition. It might be necessary to put scheming sociopaths in power and hope that your polity can direct their tendencies outwards—otherwise, if you just rely on honest and trustworthy leaders, the other guys’ sociopaths could just steamroll you.
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