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Are There Affordances of Suggestibility in Facial Appearance?

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Abstract

Physical personality involves perceptible aspects of human appearance (both morphological and expressive) that are reliable cues about human traits and dispositions. Inferences made about personality on the basis of perceiving the cues in appearance may be valid as well as invalid. While the perception of many of such characteristics has been studied before, perception of suggestibility from facial appearance has remained unexplored. Here we present the results of a study where we show that real suggestibility does not correlate with perceived suggestibility. However, there is a significant correlation between perceived suggestibility and some facial characteristics such as babyfacedness and merriness.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Estonian Center of Behavioral and Health Sciences and Department of Psychology, and Institute of Law, University of Tartu, Kaarli puiestee 3, Tallinn , 10119, Estonia

    Talis Bachmann

  2. Chair of Psychology, Estonian Public Service Academy, Tallinn, Estonia

    Merle Nurmoja

Authors
  1. Talis Bachmann
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  2. Merle Nurmoja
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Correspondence to Talis Bachmann.

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Bachmann, T., Nurmoja, M. Are There Affordances of Suggestibility in Facial Appearance?. J Nonverbal Behav 30, 87–92 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-006-0007-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-006-0007-1

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