By J. N. Halm
The human face is an amazing piece of work. Indeed, we all have unique fingerprints that differentiate an individual from the next person. However, our faces are so unique to who we are that they are also deployed as a unique means of identifying individuals.
Anyone who has watched the 1997 Hollywood blockbuster FACE/OFF would appreciate what I am talking about. Even identical twins have distinctive facial features. No matter how alike they might look, carefully studying their faces always yields some difference.
The human face is, without doubt, one of the most important parts of the human body. It is almost always the first thing people see when we appear. It is therefore so crucial to the way we communicate.
Indeed, the face serves as a remarkably sophisticated system for conveying information. Our faces can communicate subtle gradations of basic emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust through coordinated muscle movements.
Since our faces are ever being read and our emotions can be seen on our faces, humans have developed means by which to hide their true feelings from being easily detected on their faces.
This is why the woman known as the bestselling author of all time, Agatha Christie said, “The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask”. Even without the various ways and means by which we try to hide our true emotions, the truth is that our faces naturally communicate to those who look at us.
Like any piece of artwork, the human face is not exempted from being evaluated on its attractiveness or otherwise. When people look at each other, it is not out of the ordinary for them to evaluate the attractiveness or otherwise of each other’s faces. There is a whole industry born out of evaluating the attractiveness of the human face. Many beauty contests have been won or lost, just because of how attractive an individual’s face looks.
Thankfully, we have evolved as a species to realise that looks are not everything. People have developed to look beyond the mere beauty or ugliness of the person’s face to see the human being behind the face.
It is a fact that beauty alone is not enough to make a person. A good-natured person, one with a sweet disposition, but with a not-so-good-looking face can be such an attractive individual.
In contrast, someone with a beautiful, angelic face but a terrible attitude would repel others. This is useful because if we only dealt with people according to how they look on the outside, we would miss out on a lot in life. After all, we are warned not to judge a book by its cover.
With all of our evolution, however, it seems we are still much affected by attractive looks. For instance, there are well-documented cases where an individual’s chances of landing a job or even getting to attend an interview for the job were affected by the one’s facial attractiveness.
The efficacy of advertising messages as well as the chances of actually landing a sale have also been found to be affected by how facially attractive the models were. Even in the evaluation of the performances of individuals on the job, it has been found that the facial attractiveness of the individual affected the final evaluation. It seems that being handsome or having a beautiful face comes with some advantages in life.
Not surprisingly, a study carried out in China found that facial attractiveness also affected the popularity of experts as well as the satisfaction levels of their customers. The title of the study was “Can Lawyers’ Facial Attractiveness Increase the Popularity or Customer Satisfaction? An Example of Expert Q&A Services”. The results of the study were published in the May 2024 edition of the Service Science journal.
Using the photographs of more than 7,000 professional experts provided by a well-known expert question-and-answer (Q&A) platform in China, the researchers first had to establish a measure of facial attractiveness.
They used an algorithm from an AI platform to ensure that the faces of the various experts each received a facial attractiveness score. To ensure that the facial attractiveness scores were credible, the researchers further recruited human judges to also give their scores. The scores from the AI and those from the human raters were highly correlated, giving further credence to the scores.
The findings from the study were quite interesting. For instance, the results show that facial attractiveness positively impacts popularity. This is in line with an earlier study that found that attractive service providers tend to be more popular and generate more sales. This was found to be especially true for female experts, rather than for male experts.
However, the study found that facial attractiveness negatively affected customer satisfaction. The possible explanation given for this particular finding was that customers often had stereotype-based expectations when it came to seeking advice from experts. The more attractive the expert, the higher the expectation of the customer for the attractive expert to give a piece of equally higher-quality advice.
The issue of customer expectation and actual performance is one big challenge that every business faces. The truth is that rarely do customers come into an experience with no expectation at all.
Customers always have expectations, either for good or bad. Depending on how the actual performance goes, the customer will either be excited or disappointed. Unfortunately, because of our penchant as a species to be influenced by things we find attractive, the attractive service provider is left at a disadvantage. Just by being attractive, higher expectations are set for them—and therefore, they must work extra hard to meet or exceed those expectations.
It must however be stated that there is a positive side to this phenomenon. For instance, when an attractive expert and an unattractive one both give high-quality advice, the attractive expert tends to get a higher rating than the unattractive one. In other words, the facial attractiveness of the individual comes with advantages, especially when things go as expected. However, when things do not go well, customers are more disappointed in the attractive service provider than they are with the unattractive service provider.
It must be stated that the negative influence of facial attractiveness was found to hold for female experts, with no significant effect found on male experts. This is also not too surprising since we live in a world where females are still expected to possess certain looks. We expect women to look beautiful. This is why there is a stronger impact of facial attractiveness on the popularity of a female service provider.
It seems women are aware of this need by society to always look attractive. A study in 2013 found that female profile owners were more concerned about their physical appearance than their male counterparts and that male profile owners were more concerned about their personal information than their female counterparts.
This meant that females put a lot more work into their profile photographs. The result was that customers viewing those profiles set very high expectations for female experts. With high expectations comes an increase in the likelihood of the service provider not meeting those expectations and the result is a disappointed customer.
Some important lessons can be gleaned from this discussion. The first is that business professionals, self-employed or otherwise, should ensure that they put some effort into the quality of the photographs they put out there. It is just not enough to post a photograph.
If the intention is to increase popularity, then photos of individuals must be done right. Images of professionals must be captured from the right angles. Those responsible for posting these photographs must ensure that they make use of features such as skin tone, colour, expression, and head tilt to make photos look more aesthetically appealing.
It is equally important for those who post their photos online as service providers to know the relationship that exists between facial attractiveness and the expectations of customers when it comes to performance. Being just a pretty face is not enough. Customers expect an equally high-quality performance to go with the looks. Therefore, experts must know their stuff.
It is interesting to note that sometimes, the seemingly insignificant can have such an important impact. As much as humans would want to claim to be rational beings, the truth is that we are still very emotional beings. We are still moved by tiny things such as how beautiful or handsome one’s face looks in a photograph. On the face of it, your face can make or mar a customer’s experience.
