The face is the most complex-surface structure of human .The human face is commonly seen as a means of identifying individuals and understanding their emotional states and intentions. Its characteristic structures and expressions have been the focus of much of cultures around the world making the face perhaps the most important anatomical subject of mythology as he case may be.

Human beings are often very quick to judge people by their facial appearance or looks. When a man appears with a hard face the first thing that comes to mind is that he is mean, wicked and aggressive. The reverse is the case for those who have a calm and simple outward appearance as such men may act the exact opposite of their looks.

Men with classic ‘hard man’ faces are actually very soft at heart because they are willing to make sacrifices for family and friends, a new study suggests.

Psychologists found that men with a more aggressive appearance, expecially those with wider faces were more likely to sacrifice themselves to help friends or colleagues.

In the study in which they arrived at this conclusion, researchers gave students money to play a game in which they could either enrich themselves or risk their cash to assist their groups.

At the end of the study they were astonished to find out that participants with wider hard-looking faces were more co-operative than the other men.

Previous research had found that men with wide faces are judged to be aggressive and dishonest, while facial masculinity has also been commonly associated with a perceived lack of warmth and co-operation.

The outcome of this study provides greater understanding to masculinity and male group behaviour and overturns previous theories that masculine looking men are bad or wicked.

An Abuja based psychologist, Ms Rukkaiya Jibril in explaining this stereotype, said it is very important to mention the theories of Personality, Behaviorism, Conditioning, Nature and Nurture Argument/Theory, and Face Reading because these theories have attempted to explain human behavior and its impact on social as well as work life. They have also tried to explain how human behavior shapes a person’s personality, she said.

Ms Jubril pointed out that in behaviorism, individuals response to different environmental stimuli shapes our behaviors. She said that all behaviors can be clarified without the need to reflect on psychological mental states.

This school of thought maintains that behaviors as such can be described scientifically without recourse either to internal physiological events or to hypothetical constructs, such as the mind. Therefore, based on behaviorism, men with hard faces are very soft at heart might be based on their personality learned from circumstances and experiences, she said.

She states that Conditioning is a form of learning in which either a given stimulus becomes increasingly effective in evoking a response or a response occurs with increasing regularity in a well-specified and stable environment.

The type of reinforcement used will determine the outcome.When two stimuli are presented in an appropriate time and intensity relationship, one of them will eventually induce a response resembling that of the other. Based on this, men with hard faces may be very soft at heart due to conditioning of a stimulus in their lives thus the personality and font is put up.

She says further that the nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual’s innate qualities versus personal experiences in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits.

According to Nature vs. Nurture in relation to ‘Men with hard faces are very soft at heart’ might be either they are naturally like that or have learned to portray such personality.

In the case of facial appearance, she noted that it is one of the broadest topics, because it defines every feature of the face as well as the body. “Our face is the mirror of our personality”. Statistical results have shown that there is a strong connection between facial features and personality traits.

“Since thousands of years people have been trying to study the relationship between facial features and personality traits, the findings that they have reached have proven that you can judge someone’s personality through his face features with a high degree of confidence,” Ms Jubril said.

Men are naturally known to be egocentric, tough and strong; some men who wear hard faces might just be displaying their natural inbuilt trait of the male gender while some are putting up a font for obvious reasons or other reasons. Kindness is in the nature of some people, while some learn to be; this all depends on either nature or nurture; she states.

By Raliat Yusuf

Link: http://www.leadership.ng/nga/articles/27406/2012/06/15/hardfaced_men_are_softer_heart.html