11 surprising things that your physical appearance says about you

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Everybody judges.

Within a few seconds of seeing someone — whether it's on a date or at the grocery store — we decide a number of things about them, from how smart they are to how likely they are to commit a crime.

Surprisingly, our first impressions can be remarkably accurate in some instances. In others, they can be wildly off-base.

Here are a few of the things that we determine about people based on how they look.

If you're attractive, people assume you have other positive traits as well.

Thanks to a phenomenon that social psychologists call "the halo effect," we tend to assume that good-looking people possess other positive qualities aside from their looks, such as intelligence and commitment.

Daniel Hamermesh, a University of Texas psychologist who studies beauty in the workplace, found that, among other things, this cognitive bias means good looking people tend to get paid more. 

Similarly, in a study of male undergrads who were asked to evaluate an essay written by an unnamed female peer, the participants judged the writer and her work more favorably when they were shown a photo of an attractive woman whom they believed to be the writer, as opposed to when they were shown a photo of an unattractive woman or no photo at all.

People can also get a surprisingly accurate read of your personality from a photo.

People can tell a surprising amount about your personality from your portrait. 

In a 2009 study, researchers showed participants the photos of 123 undergrads from the University of Texas at Austin in which the undergrads either were told to have a neutral expression or were allowed to pose however they wanted.

No matter what position they took, the viewers were better than chance at judging the following: how extroverted they were, how high their self-esteem was, how religious they were, how agreeable they were, and how conscientious they were.

People use facial clues about your height to judge your leadership abilities.

In 2013, a group of psychologists, neuroscientists, and computer scientists from Europe and the US had a small group of participants look at portraits of 47 white men and 83 white women and evaluate them first on their height and next on their ability to lead. 

The researchers found that people used factors in the photos like gender and face length to make guesses about people's height, and then used these same factors when they judged their leadership qualities. Faces that appeared to belong to taller people were rated as belonging to better leaders.