Physiognomy Is Real, and AI Is Here to Prove It – The American Spectator

What if judging people by their external appearances is a good idea for your romantic life?

At least, that’s what a new dating app called SciMatch proposes. Recently featured in the Wall Street Journal, the app uses artificial intelligence to match people’s romantic compatibility according to their facial shape.

“The dating app runs photos of users’ faces through its algorithm to determine their personality traits, such as outgoing, neurotic or conscientious,” the Journal’s Julie Jargon writes. “It then recommends potential mates who have compatible characteristics.”

While using AI is controversial, SciMatch makes up for the deficiencies of other dating apps — such as Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge — by relying on physiognomy to determine matches.

The Revival of Physiognomy

Physiognomy is the “study of the systematic correspondence of psychological characteristics to facial features or body structure,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Dating back to Aristotle, the theory was dismissed in the 18th and 19th centuries as pseudoscience. But now, thanks to AI, interest in the theory has revived. (READ MORE: Leftists Scramble to Explain Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals)

“As technology has advanced and the cost of computer technology reduced, it has helped to showcase the theory more efficiently,” SciMatch’s website states. “Earlier this year, a study found that the facial features of customers could help extract personal information that could help marketers to better target consumers, and even help dating apps to better connect with potential matches.”

The founders of the app, sisters Yanina and Viktoryia Strylets, cite a study on the Big Five personality traits — agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness — that links personality traits to facial features.

“It has been established that humans are able to perceive certain personality traits from each other’s faces with some degree of accuracy,” the study states. “In addition to emotional expressions and other nonverbal behaviors that convey information about a person’s psychological processes through the face, research has found that valid inferences about personality characteristics can even be made based on static images of faces with neutral expression.”

Facial Features Match Political Ideologies

The success of SciMatch is, in some sense, yet to be determined. Launched last year, the app has about 5,000 regular users, according to the Journal. The app’s successful matches have only been dating for a few months, Jargon notes.

Jargon and her husband of 23 years, Craig, tested out the app to see their compatibility.

“When I clicked on Craig’s profile and asked it to calculate our compatibility, it said we had a promising connection—a 55% match,” Jargon writes. “But it said we might be better business partners than romantic ones.”

AI facial analysis, however, can do more than assess romantic compatibility. Earlier this year, another study from Denmark, published in June, established a positive relationship between facial features and political ideologies.

“Faces of both men and women who appeared happier were also more likely to be right-wing, while neutral facial expressions meant the politicians were more likely members of left-wing parties,” Fox News’ Emma Colton reports. “The study added that though it was more rare, women who showed contempt on their faces were more likely left-leaning.”

It’s good news for conservative men: On the whole, attractive women leaned more conservative, according to Colton. (READ MORE: People Are Working on Using AI to Steal From You)

Although using AI to assess personality compatibility might seem crazy, using technology to examine facial expressions and assess emotions is not new. Back in 2017, Forbes published an article on Meta’s — Facebook’s — new patent, which captured users’ emotions through their phone cameras.

“This one is a straight up flowchart for capturing the user’s image via the camera to track your emotions when viewing different types of content,” Forbes senior contributor Curtis Silver writes. “Facebook could tie your emotional states when checking out videos, ads or baby pictures and serve up content in the future just by reading your initial state of emotion.”

The technology isn’t perfect, but the app will improve as AI improves. And maybe the science behind it isn’t that revolutionary — it’s just proving what we’ve known all along.