Face Value
First published 2017
The scientific story of first impressions--and why the snap
character judgments we make from faces are irresistible but usually incorrect
We make up our minds about others after seeing their faces for a fraction of a
second--and these snap judgments predict all kinds of important decisions. For
example, politicians who simply look more competent are more likely to win
elections. Yet the character judgments we make from faces are as inaccurate as
they are irresistible; in most situations, we would guess more accurately if we
ignored faces. So why do we put so much stock in these widely shared
impressions? What is their purpose if they are completely unreliable? In this
book, Alexander Todorov, one of the world's leading researchers on the subject,
answers these questions as he tells the story of the modern science of first
impressions. Drawing on psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, computer
science, and other fields, this accessible and richly illustrated book
describes cutting-edge research and puts it in the context of the history of
efforts to read personality from faces. Todorov describes how we have evolved
the ability to read basic social signals and momentary emotional states from
faces, using a network of brain regions dedicated to the processing of faces.
Yet contrary to the nineteenth-century pseudoscience of physiognomy and even
some of today's psychologists, faces don't provide us a map to the
personalities of others. Rather, the impressions we draw from faces reveal a
map of our own biases and stereotypes. A fascinating scientific account of
first impressions, Face Value explains why we pay so much attention to faces, why
they lead us astray, and what our judgments actually tell us.