Facial features that could “predict” a person’s intelligence

A new study indicates that there are certain facial features that are associated with a higher IQ. In addition, it was concluded that people can more accurately predict a man’s intelligence based on his physical characteristics, but not that of women.

“The ability to accurately assess other people’s intelligence finds its place in everyday social interaction and must have important evolutionary consequences,” the researchers wrote in their report.

Research carried out by the Goettingen University in Germany and published in the scientific journal PLoS One reveals that men with long faces and large eyes are perceived as more intelligent than their peers.

The researchers point out that faces help us to know more about other people and deduce their personality, sex, age, health, ethnic origin, social class, attractiveness and even their political inclination and level of intelligence.

For the study, 160 volunteers were analyzed, of which 75 were men and 85 were women, the subjects had to evaluate 80 photographs of students who had undergone an intelligence test. In the pictures, the young men had a neutral expression and did not wear jewelry, cosmetics or ornaments.

The results revealed both men and women were able to accurately assess men’s intelligence just by looking at the photographs. Thus, men with a higher IQ were indeed perceived as more intelligent, but the same was not the case with women.

The authors stated that there were two factors of general intelligence that were significantly related to the raters’ perception of men’s faces. It’s about fluid and figurative intelligence. The first “is the ability to solve problems logically independent of the knowledge acquired,” the authors said, while the second “describes the ability to handle objects such as images, shapes and patterns.” (I)