Men With Round-Shaped Faces Are More Aggressive

The levels of aggression in men can be measured by just looking at the shape of their face- the rounder the face, the more aggressive the person is, a new study suggests. The study of sportsmen shows that men with round faces tend to be more aggressive.

The study, conducted by Justin Carre and Cheryl McCormick from Brock University in Ontario, Canada, has found a link between bad temper and face width to height ratio. The researchers said the face of a man reveals his aggressiveness. The man is more aggressive if his face’s width to height ratio is large, they suggest.

In their research, Carre and McCormick found that the male sex hormone testosterone can be blamed to make male faces more circular which in turn linked to bad temper and aggressive behaviors.

"(Our) findings suggest that people can make accurate inferences about others' personality traits and behavioural dispositions based on certain signals conveyed by the face," McCormick said.

Carre and McCormick have based their study on an analysis of 90 ice hockey players and their aggressive levels. The Canadian researchers investigated photos of professional and University hockey players, measuring how wide and long their faces were. They found the wider that faces looked, the more aggressive players were.

They measured the players’ aggression by the number of penalty points each player drew in a game for potentially violent acts such as elbowing, fighting, and slashing, and found that the larger the width-to-height ratio of a player’s face was, the more aggressive they were.

The researchers determined the facial shape by measuring the distance between the outer edges of a person's two cheekbones and dividing this by the distance between the eyebrows and the top of the upper lip.

"The facial structure of a man provides an indication of how aggressive he will be in a competitive situation," said Prof McCormick. "Therefore, we are able to predict, with some accuracy, the behaviour of men on the basis of their facial features.”

"If men's faces are providing cues as to their potential for aggression, then likely people are probably picking up on this cue, although likely on a subconscious level," McCormick added.

The study however did not find a link between facial shape and aggression in women. The facial width-to-height ratio is low in women as compared to men. In the study, the facial ratio predicted the extent of aggression in men, but not in women.

The findings of the latest stud are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences.