Detecting Suicidality from Facial Appearance - Essay Example

Suicide is a problem that is becoming rampant throughout the world. The following investigation shows that suicidality can be perceived from the facial appearance with more accuracy than chance guessing. Obvious cues such as levels of depression do not lead to accuracy in judgment. Opinion on how impulsive one appears has led to a distinction being drawn between living controls and suicide victims.

Literature that has been growing in personality and social psychology has evidenced that it is possible for people to accurately get information on others from limited non-verbal communication like facial appearance. Distinctions between individuals such as political affiliations, sexual orientations, as well as religious beliefs can accurately be judged from their faces. Previous work also shows that a person’s face can, in some aspects, predict events in the future such as career success, marital issues, or litigation outcomes. It has also been found that longevity can be predicted by facial attractiveness. However, little is known about whether premature or untimely deaths can be determined through facial cues. Literature examining suicide predictors has illustrated critical factors such as depression and feelings of hopelessness.

In study 1A, a test was carried out to determine if suicidality could be judged from photos of faces. In the study, 1Bthis task was repeated but only the internal faces were presented removing any cues from hairstyle, face shape, or background. In study 1C, 1B was repeated but with a different set of faces. The stimuli used in these studies were individual’s yearbook photos from a variety of universities and schools in North America. The procedure required that participants view the photos randomly and indicate whether they thought the target was still alive or had committed suicide. The data was analyzed using the signal detection theory that allows accuracy to be assessed independent of base rates as well as biases in response. The results of the study signaled that even with the faces cropped excluding all external features, participants could provide a better judgment than chance guessing.

In study 2, examinations were carried out on relevant traits of behavior such as low life satisfaction, depression, and hopelessness. Participants were asked to rate the images on how depressed the individual was. The findings of this study comport well with study 1 to show that trait impulsivity is related to suicidal behavior. However, not all impulsive people end up committing suicide. Therefore, study 3 sought to investigate how nuances closely related to impulsivity could be used to distinguish perceptions. Participants were therefore asked to rate how the individual in each face could be able to be involved in a violent impulsive act or engage in a sexual impulsive act. The result of this study was that suicidal victims were perceived to be more likely to engage in an impulsive violent act in the heat of a moment. This did not, however, distinguish suicidal victims. It is rather a tendency to respond to impulse violence that determined the chances of one having committed suicide.

In study 1B, although the accuracy was greater than chance guessing, the size of the observed effect was not large. Therefore, in study 4 professional psychotherapists were asked to perform similar judgments as in study 1B. The results of this study showed that psychotherapists possessed no noteworthy accuracy than the others. Generally, from the studies above, it was concluded that suicidality could better be judged from faces than by chance. In a further study, it was determined that people could still accurately perform this study even when the faces were only limited to internal features. It was also found that individuals who were suicide victims were more likely to be more impulsive than their living counterparts.