Face value: the science of first impressions – Science Weekly podcast

Hannah Devlin delves into the world of human faces and asks: how does the brain process them? And how do faces affect our ideas about people?

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Roman statesman Marcus Cicero once called the face "a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter." In the centuries since, humanity's obsession with the clues hidden in our faces has grown. Once the preserve of mystics, the human face has now come under the scrutiny of scientific examination. We are now closer to understanding how our minds process a seemingly infinite array of face types, and what - if anything - faces can tell us about the people behind them.