Face Value: The Irresistible Influence of First Impressions

by Alexander Todorov

The scientific story of first impressions—and why the snap character judgments we make from faces are irresistible but usually incorrectWe make up our minds about others after seeing their faces for a fraction of a second—and these snap judgments predict all kinds of important decisions. For example, politicians who simply look more competent are more likely to win elections. Yet the character judgments we make from faces are as inaccurate as they are irresistible; in most situations, we would guess more accurately if we ignored faces. So why do we put so much stock in these widely shared impressions? What is their purpose if they are completely unreliable? In this book, Alexander Todorov, one of the world's leading researchers on the subject, answers these questions as he tells the story of the modern science of first impressions.Drawing on psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, computer science, and other fields, this accessible and richly illustrated book describes cutting-edge research and puts it in the context of the history of efforts to read personality from faces. Todorov describes how we have evolved the ability to read basic social signals and momentary emotional states from faces, using a network of brain regions dedicated to the processing of faces. Yet contrary to the nineteenth-century pseudoscience of physiognomy and even some of today's psychologists, faces don't provide us a map to the personalities of others. Rather, the impressions we draw from faces reveal a map of our own biases and stereotypes.A fascinating scientific account of first impressions, Face Value explains why we pay so much attention to faces, why they lead us astray, and what our judgments actually tell us.

Genres: Psychology, Science, Nonfiction, Politics, Social Science, Read For School, Sociology

326 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 30, 2017

Reviews

[Rana · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I learned a lot about faces. Well, not really. I learned that round faces seem trustworthy, but the person may or may not be. It’s impossible to tell. My advice? Skip the book and toss a coin. Same results less work!

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I've read in 2022? Easily, yes.

Humans are good at noticing faces from the very moment they're born, before they've even been conditioned to do so. They're good at picking up on nuanced differences between faces and at inferring all sorts of information from the faces that they see. And yet, humans are also pretty bad at deriving judgment from faces. Across the world and across cultures, humans tend to infer a great deal about personalities, emotional states, and health from faces. And very often (especially when we're talking about inferring personality), these conclusions have no measurable correlation to reality.

Todorov's "Face Value" is not very well-titled (the title makes it seem like a book all about psychology of beauty alone, when it's much more than that), but the book is an amazing overview of a topic that plays a significant role in the human experience. The book frames the science content with an excellent introduction about the history of "scientific" physiognomy, and how it made sense to centuries of scientists, in spite of its scientific issues. It follows with many chapters that engage on a high level with many recent experiments, of which many come from Todorov's laboratory in Princeton. The book incorporates many new findings that have come to light using modern facial composite software and touches on cutting-edge developments of facial perception aided by artificial intelligence. And the reading experience is greatly, greatly enhanced by the inclusion of hundreds of full-color illustrations, on almost every page.

Todorov is an excellent, lucid writer, whose ideas are accessible without being dumbed down from their scholarly origins.

The chapters don't flow together so perfectly, and most of them would make sense read in isolation of the rest of the book. But nevertheless, this book is an excellent and very highly recommended read.

[Adil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think one could find a better exposition of the science of first impressions from faces. If you want to learn some well-balanced (faithful to our current scientific understanding and without exaggeration) and serious knowledge about the topic, this is what you should read. Alexander Todorov is one of the world's top scientists on this topic and turns out, a great writer. As a researcher also working in this area, I was delighted to see that the science was presented accessibly but without dilution or oversimplification. The book is also very comprehensive: apart from modern research paradigms and findings, you'll read about the history of earlier human attempts to link faces with character and this will teach you a lot about some fundamental human motives (e.g., to avoid uncertainty, to predict, to control, etc.); you'll encounter many interesting references to art and popular culture. All of this is done with the accompaniment of rich visual material, which contributes much to the reading experience. Overall, it was a pleasure to read and I think I'll come back to it anytime I want so step away from the details of my research to make sure I have a solid bird's eye view of this area of research. Kudos to Alex Todorov!

[Tess C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly well researched, with every possible proposition brought up, reviewed with evidence from other studies, and clearly supported or refuted.

The one question that felt unanswered by the end was; if split-second judgments according to a glimpse of a face are very consistent across people, yet are almost invariably completely inaccurate, and wouldn’t have been very useful to early humans, what is it that is causing/leading to such consistent identifications of certain face types looking “competent” “dominant” or “trustworthy”? Even an acknowledgement of that question with a clearer admission that we don’t know why would have been nice.

However, this is a minor nitpick, and not a question I would have been equipped to ask before reading this book!

[Joseph Carrabis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Face Value is a gem of a book for people in so many different fields it’s hard to enumerate them all. My first thought was to a friend who specializes in movie makeup. Imagine knowing the few brushstrokes necessary to turn a beautiful face sinister, or a moronic grin into a genius smirk? Amazing stuff.
A bit thick for true popsci, this is a good read for anyone in social psychology, neuroscience, physical anthropology, social history, ... Selected chapters are must reads for people who deal with faces daily yet who aren’t interested in the science behind the findings.
Authors will find this book a prize regarding what subtle facial characteristics to use to mark characters along a variety of psychology/emotional lines. Good stuff here.

[Wendelle]

it is fun to look at the pictures. the book warns us of the outsize influence some specific facial features have on our lasting evaluation of a person's character, especially for traits like trustworthiness and dominance. unfortunately we carry these tic prejudices to the voting booth. i don't know if we can agree with his conclusion that conservative-leaning voters look for dominance in their leaders' features, all the time: consider the hangdog faces of Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell etc which aren't very imposing.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The thing is, the author seems to verify then toss out most conclusions he’s made in this book. He tried to state a need for first impressions based on the face, but then spends the rest of book tearing down that assessment. At first he seemed to be making a case for eugenics, then stated how misleading that was. Then went off into some other tangent about math and computer generated facial expressions & what are the odds someone guessing can pick out the trustworthy & the untrustworthy.

[Peter P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was originally introduced to the work of Alexander Todorov in his White Paper on Biases. I have quoted him for years and I was excited to delve into Face Value. In short, the book is everything one could want to know about how we react to faces, how we infer intentions, character, intelligence etc. Utilizing historical and current research, Todorov has written the seminal book on the subject.

[Eric in Ohio · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an expansive work, and very approachable. My one criticism would be that it's more about all things facial than it is a book about the influence of first impressions. Recommended, if your curious about the human face.

[Theodore Kinni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating scientific inquiry into first impressions. Conclusion: we all make them in a fraction of second and they are probably wrong

[Staci Suhy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book for free as part of a first reads promotion

[Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deep dive into the science of first impressions. Written fluidly and with a lot of interesting examples and pictures. Perhaps not great as an e-book.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is accessible and interesting for those outside of the field of face perception, and a helpful, informative resource to those within the field.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting exploration of what we think we see and know from the human face.

[Sashi345 · Rating 4 out of 5]

我們需要暸解他人，卻又缺乏充分的資訊，因此被迫仰賴外貌資訊。這種資訊對於在一時一地瞭解他人的意圖與行動是有用的指引，但用來評估他人性格時卻會誤導人。