By Donald Gilpin

“There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face,” said Shakespeare’s King Duncan in Macbeth, as he observed the execution of the traitorous, once-loyal Thane of Cawdor.

Princeton University Psychology Professor Alexander Todorov has come to the same conclusion in Face Value: The Irresistible Influence of First Impressions, his recent book that explores why we continue — irrationally, often dangerously, — to pay so much attention to faces.

“We form first impressions of people all the time, and we should be mindful of this,” Todorov said. “It matters. We are overconfident in these impressions.”

He sees little progress in society’s ability to overcome these prejudices and warns of the consequences in the world of politics and all human interactions. “People are mindful that there is discrimination based on race, gender, and sexual orientation,” he said, “and many institutions implement policies designed to prevent these kinds of bias. But similar things happen based on facial appearance — irrespective of race and gender. And if you’re not mindful, these appearance biases are going to play a role in real-world interactions and real-world outcomes.”

Todorov is continuing his work on first impressions and pointed out that recently there has been a surprising return of the pseudoscience of physiognomy “under a modern disguise — studies using AI (artificial intelligence) algorithms to predict character from facial images.” Todorov contended that these studies are just as flawed as many human studies he wrote about in his book that make similar claims about the accuracy of human character judgments based on facial appearance.

“It is ironic and sad to see many of the blunders committed in the 19th century (think of eugenics, which was tightly related to physiognomy, another story you can find in my book) being committed today,” he said.

In a 2005 edition of Science magazine, Todorov co-authored a paper showing that many election outcomes can be predicted using snap judgments of politicians’ faces. “That really piqued my interest about what’s behind those impressions.”

He continued, “I’m totally mistrustful of these impressions as a kind of guide to what a person is like. I’m aware that you form impressions all the time. But especially when it comes to making important decisions, I really try to minimize their influence.”

A faculty member at Princeton since 2002, Todorov cited striking examples of erroneous first impressions. “According to historians, the worst American president (so far) is Warren Harding. At the time, in the 1920s, his face was analyzed by physiognomists to show his ‘greatness.’”

Todorov described Michael Lewis’ Moneyball as “a story of how you can become a super successful baseball manager by exploiting the prejudices of appearance. Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s, recruited baseball players with terrific statistical records of performance but who failed to look the part. They didn’t look like professional players, and as a result were undervalued.”

Todorov feels that laws or policies to combat these first impression prejudices would be difficult to implement, but he cited the example of blind auditions for large symphony orchestras leading to the increase of successful women auditioners. “The committee could not see the candidates and, consequently, judge them on appearance, in this particular case gender. This is a case where subtle biases were prevented from influencing hiring decisions.”

He concluded, “In the absence of explicit policies, the first step is to make people aware of such biases.”