Face facts… wide boys just can't be trusted

Published on Wednesday 10 March 2010 21:58

EVER wondered if you can really trust someone? Deciding could be as simple as looking at the width of their face.

• David Tennant: the long-faced actor should inspire trust. Simon Cowell: would you trust this wide-faced individual? Picture: PA

Psychologists at the University of St Andrews found that wider-faced men were less trustworthy, and people instinctively seemed to be aware of this.

Men with narrower faces were generally seen as more trustworthy, according to the study.

The research involved inviting men to play a computerised game for money. The activity offered players opportunities to trust other participants, but also opportunities to exploit them.

At the start of the game, a participant was shown an expressionless photo of a fellow player's face. The participant then had to decide whether to take an immediate pay-off or entrust the money to the person in the picture who, in turn, could decide either to co-operate and help both players make more money, or take the cash and run.

Lead researcher Michael Stirrat set up the games to investigate whether he could find any measurable relationship between perceptions of trustworthiness from perceptions and behaviour.

He found that participants were more likely to entrust money to men with narrower faces.

"We all make instant judgements about strangers – whether to trust him or whether to be wary of her," Mr Stirrat said. "In my research, I have been trying to find a basis for these intuitive judgements.

"From the evolutionary theory of sexual selection, we predicted that male faces may signal physical dominance and that more dominant men would be more likely to be exploitative because they can be.

"We found that men with wider faces exploited trust more often to make money for themselves."

The researchers said, using this reasoning, people may be more willing to trust David Tennant, but beware of Simon Cowell.

But Mr Stirrat added: "The results are important, but we shouldn't leap to the conclusion that wider-faced men are bad.

"They were exploitative in our games, but in other games the wider-faced men were more likely to sacrifice their money to enforce good behaviour."

For the purposes of the study, face width was assessed by comparing different facial measurements. It means that if the width of your face, cheek to cheek, is twice the length of the distance between lip and brow, you have an average-sized face.

But if the distance is larger, your face is classed as wide, and if it is smaller your face is seen as narrower.

Professor Cary Cooper, a health psychologist from Lancaster University, said people used various visual clues to decide whether to trust someone else.

"It's what your face looks like, it's the expressions, it's the shape of your face and your eye contact is really important.

"People are perceived to be less trustworthy if they never look you straight in the eye."