Here is one about your brain acting on information, in this case sensing fear in eyes, with ultra-fast response times.

And this other story about stereotyping — making judgments about the personality of strangers based on their appearance. Apparently these judgments are reliable - that is to say, that people tend to agree about what personality a face represents, at a level higher than chance would allow. Below are a few of the quotes I like.

Penton-Voak took the faces of the people who rated themselves as highest on that factor (the top ten percent) and used them to create a personality composite. This was achieved by overlaying each face, preserving their commonalities but gradually smoothing out the differences to arrive at some kind of ‘platonic ideal’ of the face for that factor.

…the computer graphic faces generated by this project will be useful in an applied setting, as they will allow controlled alterations of perceived personality in faces. The use of computer generated characters (avatars) that successfully elicit personality judgements of the designer’s (or user’s) choosing may increase the usability of, and satisfaction with, computer interfaces.

We need more of this type of work. Faces send out a lot of information, and much if not all of it is lost when communicating in the virtual world.

Both links via Mind Hacks