Take the Money and Run: Paralleling Faces

Did you see Take the Money and Run last night? I gave live commentary on Facebook about the show as it aired, and I immediately noticed a similarity between the contestants. Trisha and her dad immediately brought images to my mind’s eye of Tatum and Ryan O’Neal. The similarities between Rick and Ryan were stunning.  There were also parallels to Tatum and Trisha, though not as many.

With that, I had an immediate sense of Rick’s personality. He was going to be a lot like Ryan. With that, if you know how Ryan would act in a given scenario, you have a high likelihood Rick will act the same way, and he did. I predicted he would break early in the show, and that is exactly what happened.

Mary and Paul hatched a plan on the show which played into Rick’s ego — another strategy and it worked. Rick told Mary where the briefcase was after a 2.5 hour interview, and when they investigated it–sure enough!  There it was.

Do you see similarities between these two?  I call this paralleling.

*I caution the average person who is not skilled at paralleling to be careful.  I suspect I see nuances in facial features and emotions that most people don’t see. Many people have tried this around me and fail to make matches without my assistance.

Criminals Look Different From Non-Criminals

Arrest 1.photo © 2009 Dani | more info (via: Wylio)
Here is a fascinating article in Psychology Today by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at London School of Economics.

The article talks about how people can identify criminals in a list of photographs from non-criminals.  Does it surprise you?

I am a firm believer that our face communicates information about us, and this study doesn’t surprise me in the least. I can look at a face and know immediately if I should have concern. I believe this is one element that helps me be stellar at deception.  Faces give me a wealth of information which I draw upon to determine if someone has a higher propensity to be deceptive, dangerous, etc.

Personality (Facial) Profiling is very powerful and one of the tools that I have drawn on all my life. I thought everyone did this until scientists told me otherwise…

I have profiled the faces of over 100 strangers to date and scored 90% accurate–judged by the people’s photos who I profiled. 

Predicting a Person’s Propensity for Anger by Looking at Faces

Adriano at Anger Managementphoto © 2009 Dario | more info (via: Wylio)
Here is interesting research out of the Brock University in Ontario Canada as written by ScienceDaily.com:

“Psychologists Justin M. Carré, Cheryl M. McCormick, and Catherine J. Mondloch of Brock University conducted an experiment to see if it is possible to predict another person’s propensity for aggressive behavior simply by looking at their photograph…The photographs were very revealing: Volunteers’ estimates of aggression correlated highly with the actual aggressive behavior of the faces viewed, even if they saw the picture for only 39 milliseconds.”

What do you think of this study? Does it open your eyes to thin-slicing?

I believe this is the core of my ability to be able to thin-slice people’s personalities from their facial expressions and facial features. 

I’ve been looking into research on this, and what scientists are discovering is that people are able to do this, and do it amazingly accurately on other attributes as well.  Are you surprised?

Here is a link to the research abstract for the science discussed in the Science Daily article.

Stacey Castor and Cynthia Sommer

I am curious if anyone watched ABC’s 20/20 last night? As I watched Stacey Castor, the mother who was convicted of killing her second husband, is suspected in the poisoning death of her first husband, and who also attempted to kill her daughter, I kept seeing an aged Cynthia Sommer in my mind…the irony of which did not hit me until I went to bed. Both women (Castor and Sommer) have been accused and tried for the poisoning deaths of their husbands.

Do you see a resemblance?

Castor’s story that she and her husband were going to go away for two weeks on vacation, but that her husband was sad and depressed hit me as a big contradiction. It was my first and immediate red flag that Castor told tall stories! There was nothing in Castor that I saw that supported honesty. She was clearly a cold and callous woman, the likes of which I hope I don’t see again.


Personality: All on Your Face? (CNN)

CNN has a fascinating article today on its front page titled Personality Plain as the Nose on Your Face?

I am a strong believer that our faces reveal a lot of information about who we are. I have never heard of personology before, but apparently they have a methodology of their own.

I always call what I do with reading faces, paralleling.

Note: I am thinking of doing some facial feature reading as a side project. If you want me to share with you what I see when I look at your face, leave a comment with your e-mail below. I believe facial features reveal things about our personality. This is nothing super-natural or psychic.