Criminals Look Different From Non-Criminals

photo © 2009 Dani | more info (via: Wylio)
Here is a fascinating article in Psychology Today by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at London School of Economics.

The article talks about how people can identify criminals in a list of photographs from non-criminals.  Does it surprise you?

I am a firm believer that our face communicates information about us, and this study doesn’t surprise me in the least. I can look at a face and know immediately if I should have concern. I believe this is one element that helps me be stellar at deception.  Faces give me a wealth of information which I draw upon to determine if someone has a higher propensity to be deceptive, dangerous, etc.

Personality (Facial) Profiling is very powerful and one of the tools that I have drawn on all my life. I thought everyone did this until scientists told me otherwise…

I have profiled the faces of over 100 strangers to date and scored 90% accurate–judged by the people’s photos who I profiled.