
How your looks betray your personality - muon
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126957.300-how-your-looks-betray-your-personality.html?full=true
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billroberts
I have a speculative (read: probably garbage) theory, orthogonal to the one in
this article, that you can get some idea of a person's personality from their
looks. My hypothesis is that as long as you are not too young, then the most
common expressions that your face assumes - frowning, smiling, scowling etc -
have some effect on your wrinkles and facial muscle development. So maybe by
looking at someone, you can see some aspect of the history of their facial
expressions and hence guess if they are generally a cheerful, miserable or
sneering kind of person.

A corollary (also probably garbage!) is that one of the clues that helps you
guess a person's nationality by looking at them is these similar aspects of
'face-shaping': either through the most common sounds they make while speaking
their language, or the typical mannerisms of that culture. Obviously this
would only work within a group of people that have broadly similar racial
characteristics. My 'sample group' is mainly from western European countries.

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ivank
My untested hypothesis is that your parents and peers expect you to act a
certain way (based on your appearance) and many people accept these subtle
nudges without resistance. So, it basically becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

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ovi256
I think that is a form of operant conditioning [1] mostly through subtle cues
and social pressure.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning>

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Spyckie
There's some (unofficial) theories that you can judge a person's MBTI type by
looking at their facial features.

<http://www.socionics.com/advan/vi/vi.htm>

I don't think there's hard evidence of it though - just one's own experiences.

I can guess the P/J split (J types have a serious look) and the F/T split (F
types usually indicate to you their mood with their expressions) with a quick
glance at the face, but haven't done anything in a controlled setting.

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abdulhaq
Their MTBF, on the other hand, can be gauged by calculating a smoothed poisson
distribution over their smoking, drinking and swearing habits.

