 According to the author, what are people actually judging when they believe they're detecting a proclivity for delinquent behavior?
Through a study of 1,856 images ("controlled for race, gender, age and facial expression") they claim to have established the validity of "automated, face-induced inference on criminality, despite the historical controversy surrounding this line of enquiry." In other words, they believe that they've found a relationship between looking like a criminal and actually being one. Physiognomy ultimately stems from what Alexander Todorov, professor of psychology at Princeton University, calls an 'overgeneralisation hypothesis'. "People," he wrote, "use easily accessible facial information (eg an expression such as a smile, cues to gender and ethnic group) to make social attributions congruent with this information (eg a nice person)."
 demographics
 media filtering  prejudice  intelligence  demographics