A person’s eyes can tell about his rationality, and the nose – about intuition? Are cells imprinted with our personal history? Is it possible to recognize deceit by gestures? Let’s try to figure out how convincing these practices are from the point of view of rigorous science and whether they can be trusted.
Face reading: morphopsychology
Physiognomy – the doctrine of the correspondence between facial features and a person’s personality – has existed since Antiquity. She was influenced by the prejudices of different eras, she was accused of creating the prerequisites for discrimination.
In 1937, the psychiatrist Louis Korman gave physiognomy a new theoretical basis. In his opinion, although facial features are genetically predetermined, our attitude to the world around us influences their formation.
The “law of expansion-contraction” he derived states that wide and rounded shapes express our instinct for expansion in an environment that we perceive as favorable.
Narrow forms are the result of the instinct of self-preservation, which turns on when we act in a hostile environment.
In addition, the expression of different areas of our face supposedly reflects the approach we prefer: the forehead and eyes correspond to rationality, the cheekbones and nose correspond to intuition, the jaw and mouth correspond to concreteness.
These hypotheses should not be taken as indisputable truth. Even communities of specialists practicing this method do not use it, for example, for recruitment.
Reading in Cells: Cellular Memory
This method, which the popular press loves to write about, is based on the notion that our personal history is imprinted in cells. As long as its trace remains unconscious, it generates repetitive and painful patterns of behavior.
In this case, the therapist must “descend into the body.” This means accessing the information contained in the cells: by analyzing the patient’s pulse, by running a hand over his body in order to “reprogram” them – for example, with the help of sounds or plants.
Even if we accept that cellular memory exists, is it really possible to decipher it?
How different is the effect that energy methods supposedly give from the placebo effect? What is the real influence of the therapist? These and many other questions remain unanswered.
Read Gestures: Synergology
This practice is shown effectively in the television series Lie to Me. It claims to decipher a person’s thoughts based on their body language. The information obtained allows you to better interact with him or reveal his lies. It is assumed that “to watch the body in action is to watch the mind in motion.”
Synergology explores all non-verbal manifestations. These include gestures (based on the work of the American psychologist Paul Ekman), as well as elements of behavior. The latter may be:
- perverbal – space and time in communication;
- paraverbal – the nature of the sounds produced;
- infraverbal – elements that remain outside the conscious perception, that is, smells or mimics;
- supraverbal – external distinguishing features. For example, whether a person wears branded clothes or not.
All this knowledge is potentially useful for a psychologist, sociologist or police officer. However, it remains unclear whether this is considered art or science.