It’s a broad generalization.
Researchers have found that men with wider faces are viewed as more capable parents than their pinheaded counterparts, per a study in Evolutionary Psychological Science.
“Perceivers may be inferring a certain configuration of formidability that is based on specific figure,” lead author Mitch Brown, a teaching assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Science at the University of Arkansas, told PsyPost.
His team’s research built upon previous studies that demonstrated that wider male faces were associated with physical strength and suitability for parental protector roles.
Brown said that the next logical step was probing the “tradeoff between protection and nurturance” when it comes to face shape.
To determine whether this father figure-head theory held water — or was a bald-faced lie — the researchers recruited 101 graduate students and had them rate photographs of male faces based on how well they felt said men could protect and nurture their own children.
Half the visages sported high width-to-height ratios, and the other half featured the opposite.
By and large, participants selected the wider heads of the family much more frequently, choosing an average of 2.78 men with high facial width-to-height ratios compared to just 1.15 men with more oblong countenances.
Meanwhile, a second study tasked 101 people with building a team of five men who’d be best at protecting offspring based on their face shapes.
The ideal guardians were similarly broadfaced, per the experiment. Participants picked an average of 2.78 men with high facial width-to-height ratios compared to just 1.15 men with low ratios.
Men with squatter skulls were also associated with higher levels of aggression and physical prowess.
If this study seems superficial, that might be the point — our penchant for making snap judgments could have a basis in evolution.
“The effects in this study are fairly large, which may reflect an apparently loud signal value in the faces,” said Brown. “Ancestral conditions likely saw individuals having to infer information relatively quickly without having the chance for fuller interactions, which may lead to an advantage in forming stereotypes with minimal information.”
However, he noted that “having more information about a person beyond initial impressions would be informative in broader perceptions.”
PsyPost experts noted that the study failed to factor in the men’s body mass, and whether these fellas’ facial dimensions corresponded with their actual parenting styles, temperament and physical abilities, among other factors.
In the future, the scientists hope to investigate how these perceptions influence real-world decision-making.
“My next steps are to apply these ideas into legal domains,” said Brown. “Although perceptions could be based in potential kernels of truth and could have an ancestral function, it would nonetheless be inappropriate for perceivers to rely on visual information as the basis of legal decision-making without concomitant evidence.”
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