I strongly agree with the author that "face-ism" is a highly overlooked issue that needs to be dealt with. People treat other people differently on the basis of what their face looks like, and it gets tiring. (Although I'm not one to judge, as I've found I'm not immune to the phenomenon myself. For instance, my initial impulse is to regard people who have a "bro" or "frat" face with contempt before realizing how irrational that is.)
I almost feel like people begin to act how others expect them to act on the basis of their face; their personality is shaped as a response to the stimulus of other people's interactions with them. Someone who has a "friendly" face is going to be picked first in sports, is going to be talked to first out of a group of strangers, etc., and this creates a feedback loop where these people actually do become friendly, talkative, and outgoing.
Likewise, those with "antisocial, don't-talk-to-me" faces are going to be ignored or treated standoffishly, and this too creates a feedback loop where these people assume since no one wants to interact with them, they will just stay by themselves instead. It's frustrating.
Does every aspect of spontaneous human thought need to be given a -ism name and be tagged as a sin? "Face-ism" is essentially pattern-matching, which is the way cognition operates on a fundamental level.
Cognition is about finding statistical regularities in perception data, then using these regularities to make predictions about the future. So, on a completely unconscious level, you are using your memory of thousands of past experiences with people you know to predict a stranger's characteristics based on their appearance (among many other things).
Sometimes, the generalization does not work and your unconscious predictions turn out to be mistaken. The only way not to make mistakes is not to think. And for that, you would have to turn your brain off entirely, since these thoughts are not occurring at a conscious, rational level that you can deliberately police.
If a subset of these inferences are shown to be wrong, wouldn't you want to make a conscious effort to stop making them? It would seem that becoming less biased in your evaluation of people would benefit both you and those you're evaluating.
Conscious inference isn't always less wrong than unconscious inference.
And it's likely that a subset of all perceptions might always be found to not match reality. High availability consciousness would probably require artificial intelligence, and even then there's simply too much data for us to be conscious of everything at all times.
Consciousness is bandwidth constrained. Subconscious is very lite computationally. In the context of scarce resources, it's better to have a calculation from the subconscious rather than to wait in line for a week to use the mainframe.
These inferences are developed over millenia of evolution. They are probably not wrong. Being able to judge trustworthiness, aggression, etc. based on a quick assesment of face is valuable for survival.
An alternative theory is that we have evolved just to be good at distinguishing changing facial expressions (and body language), especially within our own social groups. Using this skill to match people's expressions with their behavior over time would give us a tool for making good predictions.
But if we then met a complete stranger or tribe whose face at rest, say purely through random variation of bone structure, happened to look more aggressive or happier or more sneaky than the resting faces of our friends, it would lead us to make biased and unjustified predictions.
More likely it's just pattern matching. Just like people are more likely to relax in a room painted green, than one painted red. It has nothing to do with evolving to like green rooms.
> "Face-ism" is essentially pattern-matching, which is the way cognition operates on a fundamental level. (...) Cognition is about finding statistical regularities in perception data, then using these regularities to make predictions about the future
I'm sorry, but don't you think that you're maybe oversimplifying cognition and the human mind, at large? I can't believe that "face-ism" is essentially pattern-matching - certainly a big chunk of the process is "hard-wired" and not based on pattern-matching.
I can see the "appeal", mostly in CS people, to "reduce" cognition (to something "doable" with a computer). But overzealous simplifications are detrimental to knowledge.
So are unnecessary complications, or trying to maintain a mystical shroud of fundamental complexity around what is essentially an extremely sophisticated structure of very simple parts.
I like your use of scare quotes around "reducing" cognition, as though it's irreducible. I'm not sure why people persist in claiming that their brains are the only things in the world that we can't come to understand as a system of simple parts.
> So are unnecessary complications, or trying to maintain a mystical shroud of fundamental complexity around what is essentially an extremely sophisticated structure of very simple parts.
How can you be sure of that? What if they are complex? Or if only one or two of the parts are extremely complicated? How simple a "part" has to be, in order to be "very simple"? What about the role of the other systems that are part of the same "macrosystem" (the organism)? You can certainly model and, in a way, predict a neuron firing pattern. You can't, however, predict how will my day change if a beautiful stranger smiles at me during my morning commute (even if these reactions and changes are produced by "very simple parts"). There's no mystical shroud here; just acknowledging that emergent behavior is complex.
> I like your use of scare quotes around "reducing" cognition, as though it's irreducible.
Don't get me wrong: I don't believe it is irreducible. I just believe that a reductionist approach - or "isolating" simple parts - won't take us far in understanding it.
"Organic" (I can't find a better word) systems aren't easily reducible to parts as an electronic or mechanic system. Even if they're made of very simple parts, making sense of the emergent behavior they produce is hard.
> I'm not sure why people persist in claiming that their brains are the only things in the world that we can't come to understand as a system of simple parts.
No such claim was made here. We may come to understand "the brains" as a system of simple parts. However, we're not sure of that; acting as if it was a sure-thing is faith, not so much different from religious faith.
Quite well-put, actually. I agree that it's a mistake to think of the brain as a "neural network in your head". Biological systems are extremely complicated, and the brain is heavily influenced by the soup it swims in. Having said that, I think we might as well discuss it even if we don't understand it fully. If we're rejecting theories of cognition because they're probably not always right, then we're going to have to throw out the entire field of cognitive science.
I do believe that a reductionist approach is critical for understanding cognition -- you could call that a religious belief if you want; I would prefer to call it an expectation based on the unprecedented progress that reductionistic approaches have made in understanding all kinds of things.
We certainly have disciplines that examine emergent behavior of cognition -- psychology, I guess, is the prime example. But I think it's also important to try to understand the brain as a computational system, not just as a black box that produces behavior.
I think an emergent, behavioral, holistic approach may be effective for characterizing cognition until we understand it better, but that a reductionist, symbolic approach is a superior method for knowing, manipulating or replicating cognition in all kinds of environments, not just a bunch of fatty cells inside a chemical soup.
Also, after reading your response, I think that I misunderstood your original comment, which to me seemed vaguely derogatory. So, sorry for that.
> You can't, however, predict how will my day change if a beautiful stranger smiles at me during my morning commute (even if these reactions and changes are produced by "very simple parts"). There's no mystical shroud here; just acknowledging that emergent behavior is complex.
Just like you can't predict the change in pixels on a screen when some bit is flipped on the network wire.
> We may come to understand "the brains" as a system of simple parts. However, we're not sure of that; acting as if it was a sure-thing is faith, not so much different from religious faith.
The scientific method has reduced a huge majority of the world (and virtually everything that was once a matter of faith) to a system of ever simpler parts. The meta-theory that everything can be reduced to simpler parts is probably one of the most solid theories in all of science.
Furthermore, if you agree that evolution is a thing, then the argument that organic systems are built out of simpler parts is almost a foregone conclusion.
> Just like you can't predict the change in pixels on a screen when some bit is flipped on the network wire.
Well, you can, as in, it would be a matter of computing a whole bunch of stuff that we actually understand (algorithms, networks). It may not be feasible, but it is doable with what we know, today. Behavior, on the other hand, would depend on computing stuff we don't understand.
> The scientific method has reduced a huge majority of the world (and virtually everything that was once a matter of faith) to a system of ever simpler parts. The meta-theory that everything can be reduced to simpler parts is probably one of the most solid theories in all of science.
I believe that you're only considering hard science. If you consider anything that contemplates behavior (e.g. psychology, or social sciences such as economics), your claim is only partially true - reductionism has helped, of course, but not in the same way it did with hard/exact sciences. I guess Aristotle still says this better than any new explanation of holism: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts."
Pattern matching may be a distinctly computer science term, but that's just a using a familiar concept to approximate the foreign psychology concepts the poster is trying to reach for. It's pretty unfair to criticize "CS people" (or any field of knowledge) for leveraging existing knowledge when they engage in the very not-CS pursuit of breaking the components of the human mind, thought process or whatever you want to call it.
But overzealous simplifications are detrimental to knowledge.
Well then why not post the relevant pysch/sociology resources on the topic? When you say "I can't believe that..." you're engaging in exactly the sort of speculative simplifications you're criticizing.
> Pattern matching may be a distinctly computer science term, but that's just a using a familiar concept to approximate the foreign psychology concepts the poster is trying to reach for.
I don't mind the using a different term, that's OK. What I mind is that, in the process of using certain terms or concepts, people make broad assumptions such as the one that was made (that this is mostly pattern matching - we can't assume that).
Yeah, it's silly. I think it's not too unlike calling everything "hacking." I "hacked" my eyesight by looking out the window for a minute at the end of every chapter, etc. I moved more and lost weight, brilliant body "hack."
We like to use language to make concepts more or less appealing, and assign them ethical value, even if it's incorrect, or impossible.
I hate this kind of thing. Hack should almost always mean subverting a system IMHO, except for less common definitions of the word (hack up, MIT hacking).
The thing is though, in many cases, these correlations are not based on long personal experience, they're "imported" from other sources (parents, friends, media, etc)... and that process is crazily lossy...
If anyone's interested in reading more about this, the [pseudo]science of determining personality based on a person's face is termed 'Physiognomy'. There seems to be little convincing evidence to support its efficacy. The most compelling, if anecdotal, example listed on Wikipedia is:
A physiognomist named Yoshito Mizuno was employed from 1936 to 1945 by the Imperial Japanese Naval Aeronautics Department, examining candidates for the Naval Air Corps, after - to their surprise - Admiral Yamamoto's staff discovered that he could predict with over 80% accuracy the qualifications of candidates to become successful pilots.
You can also get in the habit of questioning every thought you have. Which is somewhat madness, and can be a very hard habit to break. Making decisions and choices is a tediously slow and cautious process. Building methods of thinking without deconstructing them before they are built, is also very difficult. You don't have to not think, you just have to be skeptical of your own thoughts.
It's not perfect, but neither is the process of building a sequence of associative correlations and calling it common sense.
Finding statistical regularities based on irrelevant data, though, changes with fashion. The face you would trust in 1970 isn't the face you'd trust now, isn't the face you'd trust in the 40s. Whether you grew up in Chicago or Dallas, Germany or India makes a difference. Your race and views on race make a difference.
It's important that we work to not be as stupid, and that we help others to not be as stupid as is natural, easy, and lazy.
> Finding statistical regularities based on irrelevant data, though, changes with fashion. The face you would trust in 1970 isn't the face you'd trust now, isn't the face you'd trust in the 40s. Whether you grew up in Chicago or Dallas, Germany or India makes a difference. Your race and views on race make a difference.
Does it? I can't find any mention of this in the article.
It's both obviously true at the most trivial inspection and mentioned multiple times in the article.
----
"People tend to draw inferences about personality characteristics, above and beyond what we might assume based on things like gender, ethnicity, or expression. Social attributions from faces alone tend to be constructed from how common facial features are within a culture, cross-cultural norms (e.g., inferences on masculinity/femininity), and idiosyncrasies like resemblance to friends, colleagues, loved ones, and, importantly, ourselves. Olivola's research has shown that these facial attributions people make have serious implications for how people are treated, and their outcomes in life. The especially unfortunate part of these inferences is how heavily they factor into critical decisions, in lieu of actual facts.
"'The fact that social decisions are influenced by facial morphology would be less troubling if it were a strong and reliable indicator of people’s underlying traits,' the researchers write in today's article. 'Unfortunately, careful consideration of the evidence suggests that it is not.'"
-----
"Olivola has also done studies that show in conservative-leaning states, finding that the more 'traditionally Republican' a person's face is deemed to look, the more votes he/she gets. Even if they're a Democrat. And the correlation between facial competence and vote share is strongest among voters who are lacking in political knowledge."
Cultures and times are based on the people we know.
edit: This is a silly discussion. Find a story in a magazine extolling the appearance of some athlete (for example) that has a photograph or physical description. Then look for the same thing from the 1950s, 1920s, or 1880s. Then look for the same thing in China, then in China in the 1950s. Look at the images of motherhood in advertisements. Look at images of respectability before and after impositions of colonial rule. Appearance-based decisionmaking is almost entirely culturally bound.
Is this the case with specific facial features? Facial features that are considered attractive in various ways seem to remain relatively consistent between times and cultures.
By no means an expert, but AFAIK this isn't the case, except for a few obvious traits: symmetry and an even skin tone. (The hypothesis being that these are traits are that the evolution of our brains/mind has latched onto as obvious signs of genetic fitness.)
Pretty sure he used the word faceism to highlight that the behavior is essentially the same as racism. Your idea about generalizing knowledge based on past experiences gives to much credit to the human thought process. People are happy to think whatever the people around them think and then, after they have already picked their position, come up with arguments supporting that position.
> I strongly agree with the author that "face-ism" is a highly overlooked issue that needs to be dealt with.
I don't disagree, but is this something we can deal with? It seems more biological and evolutionary than anything. We want to associate ourselves with people who appear happy and trust worthy, even for superficial reasons. It's quick (apparently effective) and it's in our best interest.
I'd love if someone could back me up on this because I have no evidence, but from what I've seen, society is becoming increasingly shallow. Men and women are held to such high standards of beauty, and I don't think this is merely the result of excellent marketing by fashion magazines and affluent lifestyles.
The images portrayed in pop-culture are a reflection of what we want to see - the free market has simply capitalized on it.
> I don't disagree, but is this something we can deal with?
It is unfair to those people that it affects negatively, which is a good enough reason to deal with it, even if people that are affected by it positively don't really mind.
Not to say the unfit are irrational, just that fitness tends to prefers fitness. Glasses signal poor vision and is generally seen as dorky or nerdy. We can expect people not to make fun of those wearing glasses, but we can't expect people to find glasses as appealing as not wearing glasses. And because of that, I think some level of subconscious bias will be applied to those we view as having less than fit attributes.
Hm. Glasses are a poor example (they are having a style-comeback right now) but I understand the point. Leg braces are not considered attractive.
How do we explain the impulse to protect and nurture the weak and vulnerable? Many people marry someone they see as needing them. This is a human impulse too.
There are two methods, an old one and a new one. The old one is to spend more time with fewer people. The new one is to know more about new people as soon as you meet them. This is one of the goals of projects like Google Glass.
Imagine talking to someone at a conference and seeing a summary of their expertise from StackOverflow, an estimate of their credit score or their peer reviews from GlassDoor or LinkedIn right next to their head.
Imagine talking to someone and using an app that assigns a probability the person is telling the truth based on language, tone, facial changes and reviews from other users of that app.
Those kinds of things are part of Google's ambition for glass. Even now, Google can tell you someone's name and where they're from, allowing you to catch basic lies you wouldn't normally notice.
Edit: Given the downvotes without explanation, I have to explain that I'm not a fan of Google glass - I'm just explaining that Google wants to instantly deliver information about people that currently is learned over time.
>Imagine talking to someone and using an app that assigns a probability the person is telling the truth based on language, tone, facial changes and reviews from other users of that app.
That would be no better than our current biological means of handling the problem though. They both rely on analyzing data from sources that may or may not be accurate and assigning probabilities. What happens to the person who is given a high probability of being a liar because we have biased data based on race, sex, gender etc?
The problem is indeed very complicated and I'm not convinced technology will do a better job at that. Tech doesn't know that this person who has a poor review on linkedIn or whatever was actually suffering through loss of a close friend, relationship issues, etc. which all affected his/her mood.
As much as I love offloading tasks to automated systems, I fear that we might go too far and offload some of the things that make up our core humanity too.
I agree with your overall opinion about humanity, and I am too familiar with credit reports to think they are perfect arbiters.
However, we have to ask what exactly we are wanting to trust when we meet people. Once we know what that is, then we can develop technology to receive the information earlier in the relationship. This already happens, just not in time to affect the first impression.
When we meet people, we don't know anything about them, so if we have the goal of removing bias from first encounters with people, we either have to train people assume nothing about them, which is foolish and probably impossible, or provide (hopefully unbiased) information that is valued more than what the person perceives to be the benefit of the bias.
> For instance, my initial impulse is to regard people who have a "bro" or "frat" face with contempt before realizing how irrational that is.
I find this interesting. Do graduates seriously continue to resent people who were in fraternities that much? One would think these kinds of stereotypes didn't matter much after college.
Until I started reading HN, I wasn't aware that this kind of deep-seeded hatred existed. I see a lot of people using "bro-" as a negative prefix meaning "not adequate". This bothers me as someone who spent college loving CS and programming while very much participating in fraternity culture.
EDIT: I'm an introvert; I'm just not really shy. I do sometimes feel like I can't get along with other programmers for some reason.
Well, I'm still in grad school, so I see and interact with them occasionally. My experience is that many have a cliquish attitude, where if you're not passionately into watching football and drinking beer then you're "some weird quiet person" who is treated with disdain. Many are not like this, but I've had too many bad interactions that I've developed an association in my mind -- one which I try to ignore until I get to know each person individually.
Thanks for the response. I definitely see where you're coming from.
I do feel like there is a flip side to that where if you're into fantasy football and drinking on weekends you're somehow less intelligent. This is evident in terms like "brogrammer" or "bro-science" I see get tossed around HN.
I doubt much of the "bro" culture stays internalized for very long after graduation. Most of it just translates to severe immaturity in the adult world. Still, there's danger in stereotype-based hatred.
I agree with you that 'brogrammer' is saying something with the connotation that the brogrammer is less mature, less intelligent, less competent maybe.
Bro-science, though, is something else. It's the kind of thing that's based on anecdotes and passed off as science. It's sciencey. Things like "Bro, if you eat ground deer antler before you work out, you get huge gains! The guys at the bodybuilding show did it."
It's more obvious in sports, but I've seen it in CS and business as well. There, it's in terms of "we did X, X worked, X is the best way to do it." without comparing X to other methods of implementation. There are bonus bro-science points if other methods are scorned without consideration.
Yes. In the case of fraternities, the stereotype exists for a reason: they overwhelmingly attract people who were either jocks in high school, or wanted to be cool like the jocks.
In my university, the Greek system as a whole (with the exception of two frats) was loud, obnoxious and cliquish. In addition, the vast majority of them majored in easy topics where they could get good grades with minimum effort. In fact, most house parties were thrown on Thursday nights because a ton of Greeks were business majors and the business school didn't have classes on Fridays. Or maybe it's the other way around...
What happens to those types of people? I think we all know: most of them end up under-employed (Starbucks, etc.) or they become "full-time students" by pursuing MBAs, law degrees, and so on. And of course, the ones with connections end up as pointy-haired bosses, much to our disappointment.
Sure you could. 23 year olds who like to attend pokemon meetups. University chess club members. Small town attendees of quilting bees. Maker faire regulars.
They're self-associations largely based on personal interests, so it shouldn't be surprising that there are common personality traits within the groups. You miss out if you blanket-judge people based on them, of course, but that doesn't make them invalid.
That's in contrast to race, gender, etc. where the group is not self-selecting.
See, you're wrong though. I attended Pokemon meetups at school while also being a member of a fraternity. I got shit for is but I just didn't really care. I gave people shit for other "weird" stuff they did all the time.
You're also wrong in saying someone who likes Pokemon is a specific kind of person. I know tons of "jocks" who played WoW and Pokemon with they're down time. In other words, your fleeting interests do not, and should not, define who you are.
I always found the Greek system mildly befuddling.
A couple of my friends found their way into fraternities and I honestly couldn't see what the appeal or big deal was. But to people in the frats it seemed like the entire world was wrapped up in it.
Supposedly you get some kind of life-long connection or social network or whatever. But I've never really had a problem making friends or meeting people when I want to.
I dunno, I've never been much of a joiner, so joining any kind of club or activity, especially one with some kind barrier to entry always seemed kind of meh to me.
Maybe you can provide some color as to what exactly they're good for and why universities offer them so much special treatment?
Ok, but only since you asked. Keep in mind experiences will vary.
Honestly, they're great for making connections and serve as an easy mode for college social life. You never have to worry about having social options. There will always be something to do every single night (to your detriment if you're not responsible). You have access to tons of events with good looking sorority members every week which increases the likelihood that you'll get somewhere with someone. You meet so many different women your head spins, the odds are just in your favor.
Those are basically the main benefits. Greek culture actually varies quite a bit from campus to campus. For example, we consistently received the opposite of special treatment from the University. There are quite a few negative aspects too (like hazing) that I don't feel like delving into here. But overall, I don't regret it. I got what I wanted out of it (my wife).
I just find it strange that an extra curricular activity someone did in college could yield such a strong emotional response from some people. It's just a social club.
I can't provide insight into the dislike for everybody, but I can speak for people like myself.
University for me was an educational privilege and I honestly really went there just to learn. Social activities were a very distant third in terms of what I wanted out of school. Along the way I made many friends in the classes I took, people who were also there for similar reasons. We self-organized into study groups and helped each other with course selection etc.
If we just wanted to hang out, we did that also.
Quite a few of those people have stayed life-long friends. So the social-network aspects of fraternities always seemed kind of unimportant to me as I left college with a pretty robust social network. It's simply not an appealing pitch to join.
I know there's stories of people who went to the same fraternity recognizing each other's 20 year old rings in an interview and getting a job or some similar scenario, but that too seems like a scenario I'd rather not be involved in. I'd like to be hired and I hire based purely on job qualification, not having a shared hazing history. Again, not an appealing pitch.
> I got what I wanted out of it (my wife).
As it turns out, quite a few of my friends (including myself) also found their spouses in college, outside of the greek system. As it turns out people find ways to socialize without the need for a structured system. I'm glad it worked out for you, but it's not really appealing to people like me.
> You have access to tons of events with good looking sorority members every week which increases the likelihood that you'll get somewhere with someone. You meet so many different women your head spins, the odds are just in your favor.
And I think you hit the nail on the head. It seems to people like me that frats really serve no purpose except providing yet another form of the meat grinder bar scene, except probably under drinking age (so doing it illegally) and looking for hookups. Which is fine I guess if you need that sort of semi-structured environment, but again that's not what I or any of the people I hung out with in college went to college for.
And let's not kid ourselves, I attended enough frat parties hosted by my friend's frats at various other schools that I'm well aware of the amount of underage drinking and rampant drug use that goes on inside of the greek system. Not saying it doesn't happen outside of the system too, but if I were campus cop looking to make my quota for the month, all I have to do is park outside of the nearest frathouse any night of the week and I'll find something illegal to make an arrest on. Property destruction, fights, theft, drugs, rape, illegal drugs and drinking, all happen at fraternities at rates that far exceed what you'll find just about anywhere else on any campus. That's the "special" treatment that people complain about. Yeah sure there are the twice a year symbolic busts, but if anybody was really concerned about what was going on at the local frat house, all the cops would have to do is come stand outside for 5 minutes during a party and they'd have probable cause on something to take action. But they don't and it's understood that they don't do it.
I remember when I attended my first frat party. I was in a long gap between highschool and college, and one of my friends invited me to come hang out at his school. He had joined a fraternity and managed to get a room in the fraternity's house. I remember the smell the most, but we made it to the party and a local, very bad DJ was providing the tunes, every third song was the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" which had become some kind of de facto song for the frat so every time it played, every member of the frat stood up and sang it. Apparently this song was played multiple times per day every day and had been so for the entire semester. I was sick of it after the 3rd play. It's a social event, so I talked to people, while I was there a drunk out of her mind freshman and I started chatting it up. It quickly devolved into her bawling her eyes out while telling me about how her father used to hit her. After a few minutes of this, she asked if I wanted to go back to my room with her (she thought I was in the frat). I declined, she shrugged and went to go start over the same sad scene with another guy.
The rest of the party, and all the other frat parties at other schools and frats I've ever attended were basically similar.
The house was a mess, it reeked from one of the bongs that were constantly being smoked, one of the rooms was designated the "trip room" for people wanting to do hallucinogenics in a safe place. Animals live in nicer environments. There were parts of the building that clearly weren't up to code. There was a pool table in the basement we went to go play on for a while. But it was so old the cue ball literally shattered into pieces after a few hits.
Naked and half-naked girls were running around everywhere, the "tie on the dorknob" sign was every third door. My friend and his girlfriend ended up screwing each other while they thought I slept on the floor nearby in his room one night. Yeah, I can see that being fun for a while, but it also should get old after the upteenth time.
I never saw anybody doing anything that even remotely resembled studying.
At the end of the weekend he looked at me and was like "why don't you come to school here and join my frat, isn't this great?"
I thought he may have been suffering from some kind of brain damage.
This is all well and good in college I guess. You're young and allowed to experiment and "find yourself" and whatever. But the problem is that this lifestyle ends at some point. You graduate and go on to life. But for some frat guys they think it doesn't end. They never want to leave the parties, the easy nightly fucking, the parties, and all the rest -- and oh yeah, the parties. They find themselves in some mid-level corporate management job, or managing a startup, and mistake every social situation, even work ones, as an extension of what they experienced in their Greek life. They think that because they belonged to a social club for four years and nailed lots of girls that they know how to navigate every kind of social exchange. But they mis-read every environment and respond to it with the one social tool they have in their bag, the one they spent 4 years mastering, the frat party guy persona, and it's awkward and embarrassing and cringeworthy. But it's also annoying, stupid and childish.
First of all, let me be clear. I was answering YOUR pointed question I had no intention of trying to sway you. I don't at all care about what other people do. I especially do not make harsh judgements about people because of their interests. I am well aware you can socialize outside of a structured system, so there was no need to condescend there.
Second, holy moly...a 10 paragraph rant, with videos! Over something you supposedly don't care about.
Wow, again, I find it odd that the mere existence of fraternities yields such an overt emotional response from some people. You really flipped out and overanalyzed a group that you decided you didn't want to be a part of, and therefore, shouldn't care about.
> They think that because they belonged to a social club for four years and nailed lots of girls that they know how to navigate every kind of social exchange.
Who is this collective they you refer to? How could you possibly know all of their thoughts? Clubs are still made up of individuals, you know. You sound like you're still in college, you're projecting a lot.
> But for some frat guys they think it doesn't end. They never want to leave the parties, the easy nightly fucking, the parties, and all the rest -- and oh yeah, the parties.
This is categorically false. Everyone grows up, eventually. A lot of successful people have been in fraternities. No one said anyone outside of fraternities can't also be successful or social.
There are merits to joining all sorts of social clubs. However all these merits are easily available to individuals as well. There is no need to be so affected by the interests of others! Even if its gasp partying, like you so cleverly pointed out.
> Do graduates seriously continue to resent people who were in fraternities that much?
And it's not the existence of frats that's the problem, if people want to join a club at school, there's tons of them on every campus for every kind of interest: chess, forestry, asian lesbian fashion, whatever.
Frats appear to serve the interest of "party and screw around". Like I said, whatever, you only live once and you may as well have fun when you're young. It's not like there aren't other kinds of clubs on campus that aren't exactly promoting a studious approach to life.
But it's the after college that matters. And the kind of behavior I provided links to is the kind of behavior that matters to people and rubs them the wrong way.
> Who is this collective they you refer to? How could you possibly know all of their thoughts?
Why do a bunch of former frat guys create an interesting startup but continue to behave like a group of douchebags? I don't know what their internal motivations are, but I know they're presenting the public image of an asshole in a behavior pattern that's associated with the frat-life. Why they chose to do that is not my problem. I frankly don't care what thoughts they're having that leads them to behave like a barely tamed group of hormone charged teenage gorillas.
But the end result is asinine stuff like this story.
And this behavior really affects people. Lots of people. It's not a "victimless crime".
It's the people who don't stop realizing they're in a frat long after they're out, the aftermath of the frat-life that real people have to deal with. I know it's a minority of frat members, but the size of the bad behavior overwhelms almost all other conversation you can have about frats, even the relative merits.
> This is categorically false. Everyone grows up, eventually.
I basically agree with you. But we've all met the 45 year old bro who hasn't grown up yet. And a disturbing number of them have been floating up the corporate ladder by riding the coattails of their greek brothers. Some of them even get put into position where they're running companies and are responsible for tens of millions of dollars. There's a specific kind of life this kind of guy has been trying to replicate for a couple of decades, and it's annoying and stupid to everyone around him.
Yeah it's a stereotype, and yeah it's a bad one. I'm not saying it isn't. But it's an immediately recognizable one that most people have come into some kind of unfortunate contact with.
You asked what the problem was that people have with fraternities, I've answered it.
The university is composed of several different colleges, in a formal education alliance.
Fraternities and sororities are a separate college, in an informal alliance. They offer their own courses, for which you pay them tuition directly, instead of through the university bursar. They have their own admission requirements.
Here is a sampling from their course catalog:
FSS (fraternity and sorority system) 101 - Finding Your Clique
FSS 102 - Building Common Experiences Through Hazing
FSS 103 - Introduction to Social Hierarchies
FSS 104 - Basic Social Interactions
FSS 201 - Party Management
FSS 202M - Informal Rules of the Brotherhood
FSS 202F - Informal Rules of the Sisterhood
FSS 203 - Essential Duties of the Wingman
FSS 204 - Hooking Up and Cockblocking Awareness
FSS 301 - Organizational Public Relations (Shut Your Mouth, Bro)
FSS 302 - Advanced Pranking
...
Just think of it as a school devoted to the practical study of human interactions, based loosely on the apprenticeship model. The right fraternity or sorority will teach you how to get more out of life with less effort.
The downside is that it produces a lot of illusory conformity. There are plenty of people who don't even like Natty Light and football; that's just the center of gravity and safe fallback for their social interactions. A guaranteed safe common cultural basis is essential for knitting together a lot of disparate personalities into one social club.
That is a form of systems hacking, albeit one that many of us may have trouble recognizing, because we are more accustomed to hacking things that aren't people. If you can find common interests with a "bro", you can have perfectly normal interactions with them. But they have already established a default among themselves, wherein they can skip the awkward protocol handshakes and acquaintance-building exercises, and jump right to the profitable social interactions. This doubles as a rudimentary trust network to support immediately elevated privileges.
(I am not a "bro", but I have an outsider's understanding of the system.)
Yep, pretty much how I viewed it the entire time. I had no friends in a new town, and it bothered me (this doesn't bother everyone and that's fine). I needed a quick hack so I didn't have to worry about it for years to come. It worked great, but I'm sure there were other ways to tackle the problem.
Yes it's true. Most students who are not in the greek system view those who are with some degree of contempt or resentment. It's not surprising you were unaware of this as most greek organizations don't make any effort to participate in campus life outside their circles.
Yea, but maybe the causation works both ways. There's a lot we don't know about hormones. They're causes and effects of brain activity, and they probably influence muscle and fat on the face. Aggressive men have a certain "look" in the face, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is caused by lots of testosterone.
Edit: Or some people smile or laugh or frown or look intensely more than others.
> Someone who has a "friendly" face is going to be picked first in sports...
this is not true if you're at all playing competitively. you pick the best players first.
which gets at the limits of this kind of bias--that a consideration of relevant indicators, once known, can overwhelm facial bias. it doesn't have to be destiny.
Seems like there'd be an opportunity for a consulting business which guides you on which haircut to get, how to trim your eyebrows, which glasses to wear, etc. in order to get a promotion, be perceived as more more intelligent or more extroverted, depending on how you aspire to progress in your career.
Maybe such a thing already exists and I'm not in the loop. (I'm not talking about a personal stylist here- these seem to be to look more attractive/fashionable. Maybe there's a style that makes you look much more competent, at the detriment of your attractiveness- but you care about the former).
Alternatively, one could build software to do this for them.
Consider: Facial recognition with a camera facing the person is pretty well understood. It's not perfect, but it's probably good enough. Could we extend that to also pick up the subtle facial cues that this research is talking about? And then based on that, train a person on how to manually adjust those cues?
Maybe we're not quite there today- but I bet we're not far off. I can imagine seeing this as an app that you whip out just before you walk into that interview, like a mirror to adjust your hair, but for your facial expression.
In chinese there is a proverb consist of four characters: 相由心生。Its derived meaning is basically that: you will look how you are.
For years I've been daunting over the implications of it. I was never a firm believer nor a firm disbeliever. Advances in modern science such as this article only brings new light to how I think about this.
Whilst it may seem to be a form of discrimination to judge a person by their appearance just like racism or sexism, maybe there is certain evolutionary notion behind this. Maybe we as human have evolved certain abilities to recognize a person's inner traits/personality based on their look. I certainly do not believe that beauty or handsomeness maybe a fact in determining the personality of a person. But through observation a person's confidence or innocence can be somewhat picked out by how they appear. Which I do not believe is correlated with how they portray themselves in terms of exterior such as haircuts or the amount of make up they put on. But rather, their gaze betray them of the real self.
Perhaps that old Chinese proverb has some truth in it, and our science is about to uncover it.
Reminds me of the lyrics to an old Talking Heads song:
Seen and Not Seen
"He would see faces in movies, on T.V., in magazines, and in books....
He thought that some of these faces might be right for him....And through the years, by keeping an ideal facial structure fixed in his mind....Or somewhere in the back of his mind....That he might, by force of will, cause his face to approach those of his ideal....The change would be very subtle....It might take ten years or so....
Gradually his face would change its' shape....A more hooked nose... Wider, thinner lips....Beady eyes....A larger forehead.
He imagined that this was an ability he shared with most other people....They had also molded their faced according to some ideal....Maybe they imagined that their new face would better suit their personality....Or maybe they imagined that their personality would be forced to change to fit the new appearance....This is why first impressions are often correct...
Although some people might have made mistakes....They may have arrived at an appearance that bears no relationship to them.... They may have picked an ideal appearance based on some childish whim, or momentary impulse....Some may have gotten half-way there, and then changed their minds.
He wonders if he too might have made a similar mistake."
An event-related potential analysis of extraversion and individual differences in cognitive processing speed and response execution.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10821201
All the links don't really help to understand your point. What is an E/I spectrum? Why should I be surprised? Sorry, not everybody here has a scientific background in that area.
Not only that, but the extrovert face has a smile and vivid eyes, while he introvert one has tired eyes and a concentrated "smile". Also, the competent face looks like he's paying attention, while the incompetent one does not.
Except for the trustworthy (that is female), every face seems to be decided on current expression, instead of static traits.
> while he introvert one has tired eyes and a concentrated "smile".
Who's more likely to sign up to a scientific study? An extrovert or an introvert minding their own business? I can't prove it, but it would make sense that there would be more extroverted volunteers.
The idea that I get [as an introvert] is that extroverts see introverts as depressed precisely because extroverts would likely find that lifestyle depressing. I myself find extroverts' lifestyles depressing. Given more introvert volunteers in the study you might have found that the result of that particular test may have been inverted.
The same principle may apply to all the other faces.
I don't believe the faces they showed in the article were from actual people, but an attempt to take neutral averaged faces and digitally perturb certain characteristics that have been identified as being relevant to trustworthiness or extroversion.
In Taiwan, Korea, and many other Asian countries, job applicants are expected to provide a color photograph in their resume. In Korea, many new graduates get cosmetic surgery to improve their employment prospects. Face-ism is common and unfortunate. It harms the efficiency of societies.
I've recently come to realize that I'm consistently terrible at recognizing faces.
Anecdotal of course, but at this point I've noticed and heard / seen it demonstrated by other people enough to give me pause.
When I think about describing someone, it's almost always in terms of what they've said - specific choices of words, tone or body language, certainly never about the face.
If true, I wonder if this would be any sort of advantage / disadvantage?
There is a lot of research on the topic. I haven't seen any research that suggests there might be advantages for having it, but it is an interesting thought.
I'm the opposite, I rarely if ever forget a face and can recognize people who waited on me in a grocery line, walking down the street in a different city years later. I have no idea what it is or what it means, but we seem to be opposite ends of some sort of spectrum.
Just pointing out that WRT the reliability of the source, the same site's top stories are:
"The Disappointment of Michael Sam Getting Cut From the Cowboys"
and
"How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy"
Not saying the other articles being fluff necessarily disprove this article, but be really careful guys, this is just a thin slice above "The Onion" its not exactly JAMA or Nature...
An interesting "paradox": people at the two ends of the trustworthy-appearance spectrum are the least incentivized to act trustworthy. Those on the right end will get the benefit either way; those on the wrong end have to work too hard to get the benefit. It is the people in the middle who gain the most from acting trustworthy.
Being perceived as more competent will open better opportunities and lead you to be happier leading your face to be brighter more often and vice versa.
This is interesting to me, because personally, I feel like on happy days, good things happen, and on sad days, people stay away and it becomes a vortex of pain.
This is interesting to me, as it kind of hits home. I'm more introverted than extroverted, but I can be a true extrovert when I choose to be. I grew up with the introverted face, and had trouble with relationships (friendships, really, at that age). One day in high school, a girl that I liked told me that I should smile more. I took that advice to heart, and from that day on, I told myself that I would try to smile all-the-time.
Well, fast forward a couple of decades, and I can honestly say that that is the one piece of advice that has stuck with me all of these years. The results were instant and measurable. People, in general, treated me differently...better. My social awkwardness faded to but a memory. So much so, that I don't feel guilty doing introverted activities (which I do...a lot), because I know I don't have to be.
carsongross's comment got me thinking about how presidents have been regarded (esp. George Bush in recent years). So I looked up how presidents have been regarded over the years [0]. Salient quote, assuming rankings and competence are somewhat compatible (maybe they aren't):
> Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and George Washington are consistently ranked at the top of the lists. Often ranked just below those Presidents are Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.
> The remaining places in the top ten are often rounded out by Harry S. Truman, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, James K. Polk, and Andrew Jackson. Presidents such as John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton tend to be rated among the greatest in public opinion polls, but do not always rank as highly among presidential scholars and historians.
> The bottom ten often includes Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, Millard Fillmore, George W. Bush, Herbert Hoover, Martin Van Buren, Zachary Taylor, and John Tyler.
Now, compare that to their portraits [1]. Personally, the biggest example of "face-ism" I can recall during my lifetime is George W. Bush's portrayal in the media during his presidency. But I guess he also did screw some things up...
Quite interesting, although one shouldn't draw wrong conclusions like face-ism from it. When the corners of your mouth point downwards, it's a sign that you are afraid of something.
I guess being introvert doesn't imply to be afraid of something. More over, introverts, by definition, are difficult to characterize, so most people will have problems to detect introverts, rendering the title non-sense. ;)
Augmented reality might help offset facial structure bias, or even use it as a sort of short cut. For example, AR could modify the faces around you based on actual/relevant characteristics, including your own history with that person. Your view would of course indicate where alterations were made.
I've kept on noticing myself, and others, doing this thing in meetings whereby ones eyebrows are raised, eyes are wide open, and this makes sense in the context of what this article talks about - it's a "trust me" face - and it apparently works.
I immediately trusted the first guy who wasen't smiling, but after reading the article I started to doubt my first impression. I have been burned financially, and personally
by full time Smilers? Or, that guy who just seems too happy
for no reason?
What nonsense like this does is focus on a small aspect of overall human traits and then attempts to make generalizations to promote an ideological agenda.
Bias is a valuable evolutionary trait and judgement is a fact of life.
You get dealt a hand of cards when you are born. You may have an "introvert" face, but you might also have an above average IQ. "-isms" are cop outs that play into a victimization narrative that is then used to drive political agendas which ultimately are not beneficial to the supposed wrongs they attempt to remedy.
This is a limitless world, and don't let fluff like this rain on your parade. Get up, get out, and get doing. Enjoy the knocks along the way, and if you are inclined to feel the underdog, use it to prove 'em wrong.
It's still a problem, even if you can "enjoy the knocks along the way". You're right that you shouldn't use this kind of thing as an excuse, but I think it's valuable to be aware of it.
For example, if you've got a bias-inducing face then perhaps you can mitigate that fact by avoiding face-to-face interviews and opting for phone interviews whenever possible.
I almost feel like people begin to act how others expect them to act on the basis of their face; their personality is shaped as a response to the stimulus of other people's interactions with them. Someone who has a "friendly" face is going to be picked first in sports, is going to be talked to first out of a group of strangers, etc., and this creates a feedback loop where these people actually do become friendly, talkative, and outgoing.
Likewise, those with "antisocial, don't-talk-to-me" faces are going to be ignored or treated standoffishly, and this too creates a feedback loop where these people assume since no one wants to interact with them, they will just stay by themselves instead. It's frustrating.