It’s official: Physical appearance reveals personality traits

Washington: A stranger’s personality traits can be correctly judged from his or her physical appearance, says a news study. Researchers asked participants to assess the personalities of strangers based first on a photograph posed to the researchers` specifications and then on a photograph posed the way the subject chose.

Those judgments were then compared with how the person and acquaintances rated that individual`s personality. They found that while both poses provided participants with accurate cues about personality, the spontaneous pose showed more insight, including about the subject`s agreeableness, emotional stability, openness, likability, and loneliness. The study suggested that physical appearance alone could send signals about their true personality. "As we predicted, physical appearance serves as a channel through which personality is manifested," said authors Laura P Naumann, University of California, Berkeley, Simine Vazire, Washington University in St Louis, Peter J Rentfrow, University of Cambridge, Samuel D Gosling, University of Texas at Austin. "By using full-body photographs and examining a broad range of traits, we identified domains of accuracy that have been overlooked, leading to the conclusion that physical appearance may play a more important role in personality judgment than previously thought," they added. These findings were published in the current issue of Personality and Social Psychology. ANI