Perception Deception

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Which face is most friendly?

There are a lot of cues we take notice of when deciding if someone we’re looking at seems friendly or not.

We want to test whether you see “friendly” the same way others do.

Take a look at the faces below and drag them into the order from “FRIENDLIEST” to “LEAST FRIENDLY”. Click the button when you’re done and we’ll see how many people ordered these photos the same way you did.

We unconsciously analyse faces and each person tends to judge faces a little differently.

However, some characteristics are universally perceived to be more friendly or appealing than others, such as:

Direct eye contact
Even across cultures, people seem to prefer faces where the other person’s gaze is directed towards the viewer, rather than off to the side.

In an Aberdeen (Scotland) study, several hundred men and women selected faces looking straight at them as being more likeable, even if the faces looked disgusted instead of photos of people who were looking away.
Dilated pupils
Dilated pupils can indicate that a person feels pleasure because they see something or someone they like. Even cartoon characters are drawn with large, dilated pupils to make them appealing and unthreatening.
Whether a smile appears to be ‘real or fake’
Sometimes it’s difficult to judge whether someone’s smile is genuine or not, but we often subconsciously judge a smile and favour genuine smiles over fake smiles.