Lifestyle

If People Always Believe You When You're Lying, You Probably Look Like This

by Talia Koren
Aila ImagesE

Are you an extremely honest person, or do you pride yourself on being a really good liar?

Do you think you always get away with bending the truth and believe you can pass off your little white lies to anyone and everyone?

Well, your face might tell a different story, based on a new study. No matter how honest you claim to be (and maybe you're even the most trustworthy person you know), your face has more to do with how people perceive you than you think.

Within 33 milliseconds of meeting someone, your amygdala (which is basically the brain's alarm system that perceives any possible danger) has already analyzed the person's face and judged his or her trustworthiness.

It's one of the many ways your brain picks up on subtle social cues. How? It's all in someone's bone structure.

A study, which analyzed the faces of criminals and how honest people perceived them to be, showed prominent cheekbones, high eyebrows and a round face made someone look more trustworthy, even if the subject was a murderer and was lying about being innocent.

On the flip side, someone with downturned eyebrows (aka having a "furrowed brow") and sunken cheeks was perceived as less trustworthy and honest. In the study, people were more likely to think subjects with these features had committed a crime, even if they were innocent.

In 2016, we're not exactly relying on facial structures to figure out whether or not we should trust someone. Since our brains automatically and subconsciously analyze someone's face, this just means we're probably a bit more judgmental than we realize.

So, I guess if you were blessed with the features of a "trustworthy" person, you can probably get away with lying a little more.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't be honest, though. Karma's a bitch, people.

Citations: Want To Make A Good First Impression? High Cheekbones And Round Faces Make You Appear More Trustworthy (Medical Daily)