Facing Fate: Estimates of Longevity from Facial Appearance and their Underlying Cues

We examined whether life longevity could be predicted from facial appearance. We asked participants to view headshots from a 1923 university yearbook and to estimate how long they thought each person lived. We then tested whether social judgments related to actual longevity (wealth, health, personality, etc.) related to participants' judgments of longevity.