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Physiognomy () or face reading is the practice of assessing a person's character or personality from their outer appearance—especially the face. The term can also refer to the general appearance of a person, object, or terrain without reference to its implied characteristics—as in the physiognomy of an individual plant (see plant life-form) or of a plant community (see vegetation).
Physiognomy as a practice meets the contemporary definition of pseudoscience and is regarded as such by academics because of its unsupported claims; popular belief in the practice of physiognomy is nonetheless still widespread and modern advances in artificial intelligence have sparked renewed interest in the field of study. The practice was well-accepted by Greek philosophy, but fell into disrepute in the 16th century while practised by vagabonds and Charlatan. It revived and was popularised by Johann Kaspar Lavater, before falling from favour in the late 19th century. Physiognomy in the 19th century is particularly noted as a basis for scientific racism.American Anthropological Association. "Eugenics and Physical Anthropology". August 7, 2007. Physiognomy as it is understood today is a subject of renewed scientific interest, especially as it relates to machine learning and facial recognition technology. The main interest for scientists today are the risks, including privacy concerns, of physiognomy in the context of facial recognition algorithms.
Physiognomy is sometimes referred to as anthroposcopy, a term originating in the 19th century.
Early indications of a developed physiognomic theory appear in 5th century BC Athens, with the works of Zopyrus (featured in dialogue by Phaedo of Elis), an expert in the art. By the 4th century BC, the philosopher Aristotle frequently referred to theory and literature concerning the relationship of appearance to character. Aristotle was receptive to such an idea, evidenced by a passage in his Prior Analytics:
The first systematic physiognomic treatise is a slim volume, Physiognomonica ( Physiognomonics), ascribed to Aristotle, but probably of his "school", rather than created by Aristotle himself. The volume is divided into two parts, conjectured as originally two separate works. The first section discusses arguments drawn from nature and describes other races (non-Greek) and concentrates on the concept of human behavior. The second section focuses on animal behavior, dividing the animal kingdom into male and female types. From these are deduced correspondences between human form and character.
After Aristotle, the major extant works in physiognomy are:
Ancient Greek mathematician, astronomer, and scientist Pythagoras—who some believe originated physiognomics—once rejected a prospective follower named Cylon because, to Pythagoras, his appearance indicated bad character.Riedweg, Christop, Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and InfluenceCornell University Press. 2011
After inspecting Socrates, a physiognomist announced he was given to intemperance, sensuality, and violent bursts of passion—which was so contrary to Socrates's image, his students accused the physiognomist of lying. Socrates put the issue to rest by saying, originally, he was given to all these vices, but had particularly strong self-discipline.
Physiognomy's validity was once widely accepted. Michael Scot, a court scholar for Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, wrote Liber physiognomiae in the early 13th century concerning the subject. English universities taught physiognomy until Henry VIII of England outlawed "beggars and vagabonds playing 'subtile, crafty and unlawful games such as physnomye or 'palmistry'" in 1530 or 1531. Around this time, scholastic leaders settled on the more erudite Greek form 'physiognomy' and began to discourage the entire concept of 'fisnamy'.
Leonardo da Vinci dismissed physiognomy in the early 16th century as "false", a chimera with "no scientific foundation". Nevertheless, da Vinci believed that facial lines caused by facial expressions could indicate personality traits. For example, he wrote that "those who have deep and noticeable lines between the eyebrows are irascible". Unabridged republication of The Genius of Leonardo da Vinci, originally published by Orion Press, New York, 1961.
Browne reaffirmed his physiognomic beliefs in Christian Morals ( circa 1675):
Browne also introduced the word caricature into the English language, whence much of physiognomical belief attempted to entrench itself by illustrative means, in particular through visual political satire.
Italian scholar Giambattista della Porta's works are well represented in the Library of Sir Thomas Browne including Of Celestial Physiognomy, in which della Porta argued that it was not the stars but a person's temperament that influences their facial appearance and character. In De humana physiognomia (1586), della Porta used woodcuts of animals to illustrate human characteristics. Both della Porta and Browne adhered to the 'doctrine of signatures'—that is, the belief that the physical structures of nature such as a plant's roots, stem, and flower, were indicative keys (or 'signatures') to their medicinal potentials.
In addition to Thomas Browne, other literary authors associated with Norwich who made physiognomical observations in their writings include the Romance novel novelist Amelia Opie, and the travelogue author George Borrow.
Physiognomy is a central, implicit assumption underlying the plot of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. In 19th-century American literature, physiognomy figures prominently in the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe.
A prominent nineteenth century physiognomist, Samuel Wells, published New Physiognomy, or, Signs of Character in 1867 as a way to explain the principles of physiognomy and phrenology, as well as showing the connection between the two concepts. Wells included four principles to introduced readers to the subject:
In the late 19th century phrenology began to be taken less seriously which lead to physiognomy being regarded as a pseudoscience because of the close connection between the two. Nevertheless, the German physiognomist Carl Huter (1861–1912) became popular in Germany with his concept of physiognomy, called "psycho-physiognomy".Burguete, Maria (2008). Science Matters: Humanities as Complex Systems. World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., p. 66.
Physiognomy also became of use in the field of Criminology through efforts made by Italian army doctor and scientist, Cesare Lombroso. Lombroso, during the mid-19th century, championed the notion that "criminality was inherited and that criminals could be identified by physical attributes such as hawk-like noses and bloodshot eyes". Lombroso took inspiration from Charles Darwin's recently released theories of evolution and carried many of the misunderstandings that he had regarding evolution into the propagation of the use of physiognomy in criminology. His logic stemmed from the idea that "criminals were 'throwbacks' in the phylogenetic tree to early phases of evolution". It is reasonable to conclude that "according to Lombroso, a regressive characteristic united the genius, the madman and the delinquent; they differed in the intensity of this characteristic and, naturally in the degree of development of the positive qualities". He believed that one could determine whether one was of savage nature just by their physical characteristics. Based on his findings, "Lombroso proposed that the "born criminal" could be distinguished by physical atavistic stigmata, such as:
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This interest in the relationship between criminology and physiognomy began upon Lombroso's first interaction with "a notorious Calabrian thief and arsonist" named Giuseppe Villella. Lombroso was particularly taken by many striking personality characteristics that Villella possessed; agility and cynicism being some of them. Villella's alleged crimes are disputed and Lombroso's research is seen by many as northern Italian racism toward southern Italians."Italy's Dr. Mengele? A Museum Dedicated to Lombroso's Controversial Racist Theories"
These sorts of examinations yielded far-reaching consequences for various scientific and medical communities at the time, and he wrote, "the natural genesis of crime implied that the criminal personality should be regarded as a particular form of psychiatric disease"., which is an idea still seen today in psychiatry's diagnostic manual, the DSM-5, in its description of antisocial personality disorder."Antisocial Personality Disorder."
Lombroso's ideologies are now recognized as flawed and regarded as pseudo-science. Many have remarked on the overt sexist and racist overtones of his research, and denounce it for those reasons alone. In spite of many of his theories being discredited, he is still hailed as the father of "scientific criminology"."Cesare Lombroso- The Father of Criminology" http://scihi.org/cesare-lombroso-criminology/
Recent progress in AI and computer vision has been largely driven by the widespread adoption of Deep learning (DNNs). DNNs are effective at recognizing patterns in large unstructured data such as digital images, sound, or text, and analyzing such patterns to make predictions. DNNs offer an opportunity to identify links between characteristics and facial features that might be missed or misinterpreted by the human brain.
The relationship between facial features and character traits such as political or sexual orientation is complex, but involves the fact that facial features can shape social behavior, partially as a result of the self-fulfilling prophecy effect. The self-fulfilling prophesy effect asserts that people perceived to have a certain attribute will be treated accordingly, and over time may engage in behaviors consistent with others' expectations of them. Conversely, social behavior such as addictions to drugs or alcohol, can shape facial features.
Research in the 1990s indicated that three elements of personality in particular – power, warmth and honesty – can be reliably inferred by looking at facial features.
Some evidence indicated that the pattern of whorls in the scalp had some correlation to male homosexuality, though subsequent research has largely refuted the findings on hair whorl patterns.
A February 2009 article in New Scientist magazine reported that physiognomy is undergoing a small revival, with research papers trying to find links between personality traits and facial traits. A study of 90 ice hockey players found a statistically significant correlation between a wider face—a greater than average cheekbone-to-cheekbone distance relative to the distance between brow and upper lip—and the number of penalty minutes a player received for violent acts like slashing, elbowing, checking from behind, and fighting.
This revival has continued in the 2010s with the rise of machine learning for facial recognition. For instance, researchers have claimed that it is possible to predict upper body strength and some personality traits (propensity to aggression) only by looking at the width of the face. Political orientation can also be reliably predicted. In a study that used facial recognition technology by analyzing the faces of over one million individuals, political orientation was predicted correctly 74% of the time; considerably better than chance (50%), human ability (55%) or even personality questionnaires (68%). Other studies have used AI and machine learning techniques to identify facial characteristics that predict honesty, personality, and intelligence.
In 2017, a controversial study claimed that an AI algorithm could detect sexual orientation 'more accurately than humans' (in 81% of the tested cases for men and 71% for women). The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) accused the study of being "junk science" to the BBC. The researchers, Michal Kosinski and Yilun Wang, responded that their critics were engaged in "premature judgement". In early 2018, researchers, among them two specialists of AI working at Google (one of the two on face recognition), issued a reportedly contradicting study based on a survey of 8,000 Americans using Amazon's Mechanical Turk crowd-sourcing platform. The survey yielded many traits that were used to discriminate between gay and straight respondents with a series of yes/no questions. These traits had actually less to do with morphology than with grooming, presentation, and lifestyle (makeup, facial hair, glasses, angle of pictures taken of self, etc.). For more information of this sexual orientation issue in general, see gaydar.
In 2020, a study on the use of consumer facial images for marketing research purposes concluded that deep learning on facial images can extract a variety of personal information relevant to marketers and so users' facial images could become a basis for ad targeting on Tinder and Facebook. According to the study, while most of facial images' predictive power is attributable to basic demographics (age, gender, race) extracted from the face, Visual artifact, observable facial characteristics, and other image features extracted by deep learning all contribute to prediction quality beyond demographics.
/ref> Upon Villella's death, Lombroso "conducted a post-mortem and discovered that his subject had an indentation at the back of his skull, which resembled that found in apes". He later referred to this anomaly as the "median occipital depression". Lombroso used the term "atavism" to describe these primitive, ape-like behaviors that he found in many of those whom he deemed prone to criminality. As he continued analyzing the data he gathered from Villella's autopsy and compared and contrasted those results with previous cases, he inferred that certain physical characteristics allowed for some individuals to have a greater "propensity to offend and were also savage throwbacks to early man".
/ref> Furthermore, these ideas promoted the concept that when a crime is committed, it is no longer seen as "free will" but instead a result of one's genetic pre-disposition to savagery. Lombroso had numerous case studies to corroborate many of his findings due to the fact that he was the head of an insane asylum at Pesaro. He was easily able to study people from various walks of life and was thus able to further define criminal types. Because his theories primarily focused on anatomy and anthropological information, the idea of degeneracy being a source of atavism was not explored till later on in his criminological theory endeavors. These "new and improved" theories led to the notion "that the born criminal had pathological symptoms in common with the moral imbecile and the epileptic, and this led him to expand his typology to include the insane criminal and the epileptic criminal". In addition, "the insane criminal type was include the alcoholic, the mattoid, and the hysterical criminal".
20th century
In France, the concept was further developed in the 20th century under the name morphopsychology, developed by Louis Corman (1901–1995), a French people psychiatry who argued that the workings of Vitalism within the human body resulted in different facial shapes and forms. The term "morphopsychology" is a translation of the French language word morphopsychologie, which Louis Corman coined in 1937 when he wrote his first book on the subject, Quinze leçons de morphopsychologie (Fifteen Lessons of Morphopsychology).
Present day
Social media
Since around 2023–2024, a resurgent discourse around physiognomy has been noted on social media among both male and female users, particularly with regards to Internet meme, face filters, and anti-feminist and incel communities. Such content has raised concern about the normalization of pseudoscience and the idea that physical characteristics are inherently associated with one's actions and social status. Examples include the perception of leftists as being unattractive and women's femininity as dependent on their skull shape. An article in Dazed argued that these pseudosciences "play into the appetite to categorise ourselves".
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been reported to heavily employ physiognomy, such as the ability to predict homosexuality, criminality, and political affiliation from images of faces or other records of outwards appearance. Critics have said that this is a result of the biased databases that AI systems are trained on, and have noted its use and potential weaponization by governments and corporations.
Scientific investigation
Due to its legacy of racism and junk science masquerading as criminology, scientific study or discussion of the relationship between facial features and character has become taboo. It had previously posited many links. For example, there is evidence that character can influence facial appearance. Also, facial characteristics influence first impressions of others, which influences our expectations and behavior, which in turn influences character. Lastly, there are several biological factors that influence both facial appearance and character traits, such pre- and post-natal hormone levels and gene expression.
(2010). 9780521868297 ISBN 9780521868297
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