First Impressions Register In Milliseconds

Dr. Brian McDonough, Medical Editor

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Talk about a quick first impression. Listen to this report from the journal PNAS.

Physical features can contribute to the social judgments people make in as little as 100 milliseconds.

In a study, volunteers and researchers viewed photographs of faces and rated them on social traits. Then, they gave each photograph an average score for youthful attractiveness, dominance, and approachability. Using computer imaging, the researchers then studied which facial features corresponded with each attribute.

In case you are wondering, after all of the work in the study, the mouth was found to be the most important for approachability, the eyes for youthful-attractiveness, and a masculine face shape and skin tone for dominance.

Don't feel bad if you have a more feminized face shape - it is correlated to youthful-attractiveness.