What People Assume About You Just by Looking

From professional employment to politics, it probably comes as no surprise that looks matter. Especially when we don’t know someone, there are specific traits we think we see. And quickly.

Source: nicolagiordano on Pixabay

Jumping to Conclusions Based on What We See

Nuria Tolsá-Caballero and Chia-Jung Tsay in a piece aptly entitled “Blinded by Our Sight” (2022) discuss how quickly we jump to conclusions about personality characteristics just by looking.[i] Interestingly, given the array of visual cues available, one of the traits we form an impression about most quickly is competence.

Tolsá-Caballero and Tsay explain that we judge the competence of others using visual information to select leaders, often neglecting more relevant data. We process information that can be seen in photographs, including facial and demographic characteristics as well as apparel.

Tolsá-Caballero and Tsay note that such impressions can be formed within less than 100 milliseconds of exposure. And despite being formed so rapidly, they note that facial perceptions of competence can have an enormous impact in determining whom we select for positions of status and power, and even how we determine CEO salaries.

Voting With our Eyes

Visual judging may impact voting. Tolsá-Caballero and Tsay note that elections are often won based on perceived competence, while perceptions of other traits, including trustworthiness, likeability, emotional stability, and attractiveness, do not predict outcomes better than chance. They note that the appearance of competence may actually have more impact in the absence of other meaningful information because we are more likely to use first impressions to evaluate people who are unfamiliar.

Specifically, Tolsá-Caballero and Tsay observe that voters with less political knowledge seem to be influenced by visual cues from candidate photographs in general elections, while voters with more political knowledge were apparently unaffected by visual cues. In primary elections, however, they observe that high-knowledge voters may know little about the candidates themselves, and therefore allow visual cues to guide their perceptions of competence. In fact, they observe that visual cues can impact impression formation to the extent that people may discount or ignore relevant information.

How reliable are such conclusions? Tolsá-Caballero and Tsay note that actual competence is not strongly related to facial features, nor is facial appearance correlated with effectiveness as a leader, performance as a CEO, or intelligence. Instead, Tolsá-Caballero and Tsay note that research on static visual cues demonstrates that competence judgments are embedded in stereotypical ideas about demographic traits and the perception of status. They note that this explains why we may make judgments automatically, often before even observing the behaviors of others.

The takeaway appears to be that whether casting a ballot or hiring a new employee, looks do matter, but perhaps not in the ways we might automatically assume. Getting to know people in person not on paper is the best way to develop a personality profile that is reliable.