Is a man's facial appearance predictive of how he will die?
The ability of a range of health professionals including an oncologist, a haematologist, a cardiologist, a general practitioner and a counsellor to predict the cause of death from facial appearance has been evaluated. Each participant was asked to predict the cause of death from facial photographs of 200 caucasian male doctors whose cause of death was known to be due to either arterial disease or neoplasia. Statistically significant concordance was found between the oncologist and both the GP and the counsellor in their predictions of cause of death, although the individual accuracy was no greater than would be expected by chance. This suggests that common judgments based on facial appearances may be shared among certain health professionals.
Cummins
D
D
Department of Haematology, Harefield Hospital, Middlesex, UK.
Hoskin
P
P
Young
J
J
Goodman
I L
IL
Coupe
M O
MO
Halil
O
O
Foy
C J
CJ
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002423:Cause of Death; D005149:Facial Expression; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010826:Physiognomy; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity