Research has shown that the degree to which people focus on the appearance of others differs depending on their personality and mental health status. A research team from the University of Bern, Switzerland, published a study in the international academic journal ‘Plos One’ on the 15th (local time) that introverts or people suffering from anxiety and depression spend less time focusing on faces in photos of others than extroverts. announced on
Normally, when people look at a picture, they focus on the face of the person in the picture. It is to pay more attention to the appearance of a person rather than the background of a photograph or other objects. According to a previous study, even newborn babies tend to focus on human faces. In the academic world, it is analyzed that humans instinctively focus on their appearance in order to develop their social abilities.
The researchers hypothesized that personality or mental health conditions might affect the degree to which people care regarding their appearance. To verify this, an experiment was conducted with 120 German and Swiss adults. The average age of the participants was 22 years old, and the gender consisted of 100 females and 18 males, and 2 participants who refused to choose their gender.
The participants’ personalities were evaluated by scoring on five items: extroversion, cheerfulness, diligence, openness, and nervousness. Mental health status measured the degree of feeling anxious and depressed. The Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS-6) was used as an evaluation tool.
Participants gazed at 20 randomly selected images for 10 seconds each. The images displayed on the computer were blurred and only a 20-pixel radius was sharpened as the participants moved the mouse cursor. All images contained human faces of a certain size, and in half of them, the human gaze was not looking straight ahead.
The analysis found that people who scored high on extroversion, cheerfulness, and openness focused more on human faces in photos than those who scored low on extroversion, cheerfulness, and openness. All participants spent an average of 17% of their time looking at photos to identify faces. People who scored high on extroversion tended to check their faces longer than average. On the other hand, those who felt more anxious or depressed spent less time looking at people’s faces than average.
The research team said, “It was confirmed that the degree of interest in human faces is related to personality traits such as openness, extroversion, and kindness. “There was a tendency to avoid doing it,” he said.
