Jag har tidigare rapporterat om en studie som indikerar att brottslingar är relativt fula. I den nya studien ”The Accuracy of Inferences about Criminality Based on Facial Appearance”, publicerad i Journal of  Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, rapporteras följande:

[P]articipants were able to distinguish between criminals and non-criminals based on static facial images alone, controlling for race, age, facial hair and markings, attractiveness, or any other obvious indicators of criminal status. This finding was replicated with a different set of photos, a refined rating system, affect control measures, and using three new criminal types. Thus, while replicating the main finding finding from the initial experiment, we also ruled out factors that may have affected the ratings in the first experiment, namely emotional display cues that may have been specific to the situation in which criminals were photographed. We also showed that our previous finding was not a function of the particular photos or criminal types used in the first experiment.

Vårt ansikte tycks säga mycket om oss, men inte allt. Exempelvis kunde deltagarna i studien inte, på basis av utseende, skilja mellan våldsamma och icke-våldsamma brottslingar.