ABSTRACT
This chapter considers that Shakespeare was right about the accuracy of face reading. It also considers bases for face reading other than accuracy that the overgeneralization of reactions to facial qualities that convey the adaptively significant attributes. The facial qualities communicate various traits investigated by examining static and expressive features that are correlated both with actual traits, as revealed in self-reports, and with strangers' trait judgments. Intelligence is another trait for which accurate detection seem to be functional, since it is useful to know whose advice to follow and whose to eschew. The chapter also discusses an overgeneralization effects that yield expectancies which contribute to the development of actual appearance-trait relations via self-fulfilling prophecies. People whose facial qualities resemble those of infants are perceived to have childlike traits and treated accordingly—an overgeneralization effect that reflects the adaptive value of responding to facial cues to maturity, such as nurturing the young and mating with the fertile.
