Mug Shots or Guilt by Appearance

[jayne lee wilson]

I'm with Petrushka and Shakespeare on this one. But... if you can watch a face as it speaks and moves, you can tell much, much more...
...yet still end up with mistaken conclusions!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

if you get the faces [photographs] of presidential candidates rated by joe public for how likeable they look [no further instruction needed] you can predict the election outcome pretty well .... likeable chops get the vote every time ...


there is a terrible ambiguity in the phrase 'mug shots' eh .....

[Pabmusic]

...I have often heard people say of a man:'He looks just like a paedophile/rapist etc'. This is dangerous nonsense.

Shakespeare was right and John Terry could well be a very nice chap.

I'm with Petrushka and Shakespeare on this one. But... if you can watch a face as it speaks and moves, you can tell much, much more...
...yet still end up with mistaken conclusions!

How true. Cesare Lombroso must shoulder much of the blame, because his theory of 'ativism' was very popular in the 19th Century - in other words, there were 'criminal types' who could be recognised by physical features, especially anything that was more ape-like than most (that's a terrible misunderstanding of Darwin, of course, but most of Lombroso is really Lamarkian, talking of acquired characteristics). This was all debunked by the start of WW1, except in the USA, where research continued, and - horrifically - in Nazi Germany. We owe the expressions 'criminal type' and 'born criminal' to Lombrosoo. It's pervasive, because people like to feel they are 'different' from criminals (or whatever types they can label). Modern genetics concerns itself sometimes with the genetic roots of some forms of behaviour, but there is a much sounder scientific basis to that.

Fans of Sherlock Holmes will notice Lombroso's theories occasionally creeping in - they do so more blatantly in the works of many of Conan Doyle's contemporaries.

[Panjandrum]

Fans of Sherlock Holmes will notice Lombroso's theories occasionally creeping in - they do so more blatantly in the works of many of Conan Doyle's contemporaries.

Indeed. A simian-type villain, Beppo appears in the short story,The Adventure of The Six Napoleons. These ape like characteristics manifest themselves in a remarkable agility and a propensity to bite anyone who defies him.

I actually incline more to the view propounded by Coco Chanel that we all have the face we deserve by fifty; although, I am more inclined to think that our defining characteristics are visible long before middle age. IMO, we have all been endowed to a greater or lesser extent with the ability to identify friend or foe by visible and other sensory means. This would be consistent with much of the animal realm. Without this ability, it is quite probable that we would have gone the way of those species insufficiently endowed with the quality of self preservation. Anyone with a canine, will have noted how they seem to intuit a sympathetic personality. Children, too, have often been considered to have this ability when introduced to adults.

This, of course, does not mean that physiognomy is infallible, or an exact science in any degree, but that, as JLW says, that if we observe someone for a sufficient length of time, there are usually sufficient clues in their mien or behaviour towards others for one to gain a pretty accurate insight into a personality in a relatively short space of time. The question is whether we have the ability to interpret those clues correctly!

[Pabmusic]

[aeolium]

Schopenhauer in his essay on physiognomy seems to subscribe to the view that a person's character is stamped in his features, although he qualifies this by stating that it is not always easy for an observer to decode ("the deciphering of the face is certainly a great and difficult art").

[Panjandrum]

A trifle unfair perhaps, but what can we read into this visage?

Are we, in anyway, surprised to learn that the subject has been convicted of a criminal offence? Or that he is a politician? Does not the whole man's life speak to us from his features? To quote Schopenhauer (Aeolium gratias): "There are individuals whose faces are stamped with such naïve vulgarity and lowness of character, such an animal limitation of intelligence, that one wonders how they care to go out with such a face and do not prefer to wear a mask. Nay, there are faces a mere glance at which makes one feel contaminated."

Or should we not read a book by its cover?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i do not recalll who might haave commented on free will by saying pah at the age of fifty your family stares back at you from the mirror ...

if character is not in the face why do actors use make up ..... after all they are not necessarily trying to pull when on the stage or film set?


humans have a rather large neurological machinery for reading mugs .... and judge them in an instant ....and recognise them even faster i should think .....

[Panjandrum]

if character is not in the face why do actors use make up ..... after all they are not necessarily trying to pull when on the stage or film set?

In order to conceal or emphasise certain features which may or may not be in keeping with the part they are playing?

Of course, the skilled politician knows how to conceal or emphasise certain features when s/he is being watched, which is what an actor does. It's the skill of being able to watch a face in repose, when it is not conscious of being watched, that enables the student of physiognomy to make certain deductions as to character.

As for familial resemblances staring back at us in a mirror, it's surely hardly surprising if we share certain character traits with flesh and blood, although a disinterested observer is unlikely to be aware of these atavistic similarities...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

atavistic

what a pessimistic and backward looking assumption about DNA, not to say reductionist in the Hawkins mould .... the whole thing that Darwin was on about with evolution was not the past and extiction but the future, adaptation and survival ..... as well ask the mirror 'hence' as 'whence' since that is what we ask the face .... what next in our adventure chum?

[Nick Armstrong]

A trifle unfair perhaps, but what can we read into this visage?
Or should we not read a book by its cover?

Point taken!!

What about these visages?

[Panjandrum]

what a pessimistic and backward looking assumption about DNA, not to say reductionist in the Hawkins mould .... the whole thing that Darwin was on about with evolution was not the past and extiction but the future, adaptation and survival ..... as well ask the mirror 'hence' as 'whence' since that is what we ask the face .... what next in our adventure chum?

Don't you "chum" me, pal!

[amateur51]

Ah, thanks vinteuil. All is clear.

The Lutrine Libel, as my friend Kevin the Indian river otter opined only the other day

[Nick Armstrong]

Don't you "chum" me, pal!

I wouldn't be surprised if that link activates Frenchie's Robot in "Accelerated Enforcement" mode..

[amateur51]

I wouldn't be surprised if that link activates Frenchie's Robot in "Accelerated Enforcement" mode..