ABSTRACT
Face reading is universal but imperfect. The deficiencies are grounded in adaptive mechanisms and, as such, it leads to shared stereotypes. The social consequences of facial appearance are not trivial, and the effects are comparable in magnitude to those of other, better established, influencing factors. Moreover, people show acute sensitivity to the age information and they do so as early as four months of age. Although there is as little evidence that it is true within a normal population of individuals who are all the same age, it is certainly true when one considers the extremes. When global personality traits are examined, the attractiveness halo shows moderate accuracy only for individuals whose appearance has been stable over many years. This chapter provides insights that are used to fight face effects. It also focuses on attractiveness and babyfaceness because these are the only two facial qualities that have received substantial attention in the research literature.
