William Atkins
Saturday, 23 August 2008 20:39
Science -
Biology
Page 1 of 3
A Canadian study has shown that aggressive behavior, such as with computer-game and hockey players, can be predicted by the width of a man’s face, but not of a woman’s.
As discussed in the article “
In your face: Facial metrics predict aggressive behaviour in the laboratory and in varsity and professional hockey players,” Canadian behavioral neuroscientists Justin M. Carré and Cheryl M. McCormick found that
“Facial characteristics are an important basis for judgements about gender, emotion, personality, motivational states and behavioural dispositions.”
Drs. Carré and McCormick are with the Department of Psychology, Brock University, at Catharines, Ontario, Canada. McCormick is also associated with the Centre for Neuroscience, Brock University.
In the Tuesday, August 19, 2008 online issue of the journal
Proceeding of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, the two scientists discuss the conclusions of their study of “
sexual dimorphism [differences between, and of, men and women]
in facial metrics.”
Specifically, they conducted three studies with respect to facial width-to-height ratio differences in the traits of "dominance" and "aggression" in men and women.
In the first study, the researchers used questionnaires to answer questions pertaining to a behavioral task given to 88 college students in a laboratory setting. The task was to play a computer game against a person of the opposite sex.
In reality, the researchers pitted each student against the computer. They pushed one button to add points to their game, pushed a second button to protect the points they had already accumulated, and pushed a third button to “aggressively” steal points from their opponent.
The results follow on the next page.
