Intuitive Thinking is Associated with Stronger Belief in Physiognomy and Confidence in the Accuracy of Facial Impressions

TL;DR

This paper explores how common it is for people to believe that facial features reveal personality traits and finds that such beliefs are widespread and linked to trusting intuition.

Contribution

The study identifies intuitive thinking as a key psychological correlate of physiognomic belief across diverse populations.

Findings

About 50% of participants in a representative Dutch sample endorsed physiognomic beliefs.

Physiognomic belief is strongly associated with trust in intuitive thinking across multiple countries.

Belief in physiognomy is consistent across gender, age, education, and income groups.

Abstract

Physiognomy, the idea that a person’s character is reflected in their facial features, has a long history in scholarly thought. Although now widely regarded as pseudoscience in academic circles, recent work suggests that laypeople hold physiognomic beliefs and that belief endorsement is associated with support for facial profiling technology and other outcomes. Here, we build on previous work and investigate who believes in physiognomy. In four studies (three preregistered), we (1) assess the prevalence of physiognomic beliefs across different sociodemographic groups, and (2) investigate its psychological correlates. In a large, representative sample of the Dutch population (Study 1, n = 2624), about 50% of participants at least somewhat endorsed physiognomic beliefs. Endorsement of physiognomic beliefs varied little as a function of gender, age, education, and income. Across different measures of thinking styles and other lay beliefs, we found that physiognomic beliefs were most strongly related to how much people trust their intuitions—an association that emerged consistently with British (Study 2, n = 224), Nigerian (Study 3, n = 147), and Dutch participants (Study 4, n = 388). Participants who scored higher on faith in intuition were also more confident in the accuracy of their face-based trustworthiness impressions. In sum, the present studies suggest that lay beliefs in physiognomy are (a) common, (b) similarly endorsed across various socio-demographic groups, and (c) associated with an intuitive thinking style.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10919-025-00497-w.

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