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PERSONOLOGY | PSYCHOLOGY

How your looks shape your personality

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

By Christian Jarrett21st June 2019

We tend to think of our looks as separate from who we are. But it turns out that physical traits like
height or attractiveness may shape our personalities, behaviours, even politics.

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The boarding school where I was a pupil in the 1990s provided the perfect microcosm for anyone
interested in how “survival of the fittest” plays out among humans. In a boarding house of 50-plus
rambunctious boys, all of us employed various strategies to avoid becoming isolated and bullied, from
forming coalitions to gaining popularity by selling cheap batteries (my own deterrent-based approach
involved cultivating a reputation as a karate fanatic).
Then there was the minority of larger-than-average boys whose sheer size meant they had little to worry
about. These chaps had an understandable swagger and confidence about them – their outgoing,
assertive personalities seemed to reflect their physicality.

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Can your personality develop in response to your physique? (Credit: Getty Images)

Was that correspondence between their body and character traits a chance correlation, or had their
personalities developed in response to their physiques? One theory holds that it could be the latter.
Known as “facultative personality calibration”, this is the idea that our personalities develop in a way
that best suits the other genetic cards we’ve been dealt, including our size, strength, and attractiveness.

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