0000000000022033
AUTHOR
Tobias M. Schneider
Cross-ethnic assessment of body weight and height on the basis of faces
Abstract Previous research has revealed a strong relationship between mere visual facial cues and body weight. They can be exploited to validly judge the weight of the human body. We tested to what extent observers are able to judge body weight and height on the basis of same-ethnicity and different-ethnicity faces. Caucasian and Asian observers saw Caucasian and Asian faces and estimated the person’s weight and height – merely on the basis of greyscale photographs of the face. These height and weight estimates were influenced by ethnocentric specifics of familiar face proportion and face–body relationship. Own-ethnicity weight estimations showed higher accuracy than foreign-ethnicity estim…
Judging body weight from faces: the height-weight illusion.
Being able to exploit features of the human face to predict health and fitness can serve as an evolutionary advantage. Surface features such as facial symmetry, averageness, and skin colour are known to influence attractiveness. We sought to determine whether observers are able to extract more complex features, namely body weight. If possible, it could be used as a predictor for health and fitness. For instance, facial adiposity could be taken to indicate a cardiovascular challenge or proneness to infections. Observers seem to be able to glean body weight information from frontal views of a face. Is weight estimation robust across different viewing angles? We showed that participants stron…