Personality judged by physical appearance

BERKELEY, Calif., Dec. 14 (UPI) -- People can accurately judge some aspects of a stranger's personality from looking at photographs, U.S. researchers suggest.

Study authors Laura P. Naumann of the University of California, Berkeley; Simine Vazire of Washington University in St. Louis; Peter J. Rentfrow of the University of Cambridge in England and Samuel D. Gosling of the University of Texas at Austin asked participants to assess the personalities of strangers first on a photograph posed to the researchers' specifications and then on a photograph posed the way the subject chose.

The participants' judgments were then compared with how the person and acquaintances rated that individual's personality.

The study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 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.

"As we predicted, physical appearance serves as a channel through which personality is manifested," the authors said in a statement. "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."