Personality Identification at Zero Acquaintance

old man kelly  061909 by whitney waller
old man kelly 061909, a photo by whitney waller on Flickr.

Science has been investigating what they call personality identification at zero acquaintance, and I find the subject fascinating. I believe we all have some ability to look at a person, and by looks alone, are able to identify personality traits of another person.

I have been keeping track of research that I find on this topic because I believe it is a tool I use every day when discerning the honesty of people. I call it facial profiling. While I don’t believe a face can reveal a liar, I do believe that expressions of emotions and facial features reveal information about a person. And that information through the process of logical deduction can help us identity people who have a higher propensity to lie. 

In this study, researchers found that people were able to identify sexual orientation of people by listening to one monosyllabic word with an accuracy rate of 75%.  Does that surprise you?

I believe we all have the ability to do this, but with all things, we just have varying degrees of talent.