Some faces, like those with a frown or a serious look, can make people seem untrustworthy even if they’re not really like that. This affects how we treat each other in everyday life and even big decisions like who we choose for jobs or vote into office.

A study from Columbia shows that we can do something about these judgments. The study involved four experiments with 1,400 volunteers. It found that if a person’s face looks untrustworthy, they are more likely to get the death penalty instead of life in prison. Mock jurors also tended to give harsher verdicts to made-up cases with people who looked untrustworthy.

Beyond biases

To help people get past these biases, the researchers created a training program. People who went through this training stopped relying so much on facial stereotypes. On the other hand, people who didn’t get the training still had strong biases.

In one part of the study, participants had to decide if mugshots of 400 inmates in Florida looked trustworthy or not. Inmates with faces seen as less trustworthy were more likely to get the death penalty. This happened even when people consciously tried not to be biased against certain faces.

The training worked by changing how people unconsciously linked specific facial features to looking untrustworthy. Instead of sticking to the old idea, participants learned to associate untrustworthy-looking faces with trustworthy behaviors. This broke the automatic connection between these features and being seen as untrustworthy.

Judging by appearances

Unlike past efforts telling people to consciously avoid judging by appearances, this training operated on a more automatic level. It successfully got rid of biases, not just in conscious decisions but also in unconscious reactions. This is important because even if we think we’re being fair, our automatic reactions can still cause problems.

The study only looked at white male faces to keep things simple. Now, the researchers are checking if the training works with different faces and backgrounds.

“These findings bolster prior work that facial stereotypes may have disastrous effects in the real world, but, more importantly, provide a potential inroad toward combating these sorts of biases,” the authors conclude.

“By exposing a cognitive pathway toward eradicating facial stereotypes, future research must investigate whether this training could be broadly applied and how to ensure the bias reduction persists over time.”