Moral of the story: Hate everyone equally and don't trust anyone with a face. Got it.
Finally buttoning up high school is one of the greatest moments of our collective lives. Not because we move to a new chapter tackling the real world with adult responsibilities, or that curfew is now lifted from dusk to whenever — it's more so that we never have to deal with those fucking people again, the same idiots that followed you through 12 grueling seasons of growing up. So long, fuckers …
But then it sets in: People never change, group mentality is a constant. Those same cliques you were so excited to leave behind just grow with you, often excluding everyone else for reasons yet unknown.
Well, if you've ever felt like the mob doesn't care about you, maybe it's time to blame your stupid face.
Researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland, led by Dr. Selma Rudert, studied what affect a person's appearance has on the mentality of a group and if it can justify excluding them based off of facial expressions alone.
In the study, groups of people were given photos of randoms with different facial expressions, ranging from 'cold and incompetent' to 'warm and competent' and most everything in between. They were then told to ostracize someone from the group, for no reason other than the way they look. The groups overwhelmingly chose the facial expressions of those who looked cold and incompetent, even justifying it because they appeared to be assholes or untrustworthy.
"Individuals tend to exclude people from a groups who they perceive as troublemakers or selfish in order to restore the harmony and the cohesion of their group," Rudert tells Broadly. "Since individuals use facial features of others for their moral judgments, people whose faces appear both cold and incompetent might be more likely to be perceived as such troublemakers — and consequently, individuals judge it as more acceptable to exclude them."
It's chucking the book into the Goodwill pile before you even care to read the title. If you think 'white privilege' is one of the most pervasive factors of why people get ahead in life, maybe it's time to rethink your whole argument.
"Research has shown that persons with a so-called 'babyface' receive more help from others and are less likely to be found guilty for intentional criminal acts," Rudert said. "Of course, this also does not mean that we should automatically distrust a person with a nice face. But we should try to let our judgment not be influenced by these factors and rather invest the time and energy to try to get to know the person or understand the situation more fully."
Moral of the story: Hate everyone equally and don't trust anyone with a face. Got it.
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