Open Book

How thoroughly does a man give himself away by his facial expression, his voice, the way he walks? Much more than he suspects, says Psychologist Werner Wolff of Bard College, Columbia University.

Dr. Wolff, who for 18 years has searched for a means of reading people's inner personality from their appearance, reports his results in The Expression of Personality (Harper; $3.50). Eminent psychologists like Harvard's Gordon Allport, consider his book a milestone in "depth psychology" (study of the subconscious).

Beginning in Berlin in 1925, Wolff examined with a piercing eye the physiognomy and behavior of several dozen men and women. In pictures and sound he recorded their faces, hands, voices, handwriting, gait, storytelling style.

From these superficial appearances, observers described the character of Wolff's group with a high degree of unanimity and accuracy. With a consistency ranging from 40% to 90% better than pure chance, they matched the right hands with the right face, a person's storytelling style with his handwriting, his voice with a description of his personality. Even children and insane people showed some shrewdness at this game.

Most observers could tell from a person's appearance whether he was bold or fearful, gay or morose, intelligent or stupid. They were less successful in detecting inner feelings. But with training in sharper observation, the judges' appraisals grew more penetrating; for example, by noting exaggerated mannerisms and subtle hesitations they could determine when boldness merely cloaked a feeling of inferiority.

Art v. Science. From this phase of his experiments, Psychologist Wolff drew a few significant conclusions: since everyone has some conflicting traits, which show up in contradictions in his appearance, a person's character can be read much more reliably from a combination of elements than from any single one (such as the face or handwriting); actors and artists, who relied on a general impression, were better at character-reading than scientists or philosophers, who relied more on analysis.

These discoveries were scarcely surprising. But Wolff's most significant findings came from his guinea pigs' efforts to read their own character.

He confesses that he stumbled on this line of investigation when he walked into a dressing room in a tailor shop one day, found himself confronted by a strange man, fled. It turned out that he had seen himself in a mirror. Thereupon Psychologist Wolff began to confront his guinea pigs with their own pictures and records (mingled with others), with surprising results: only one in ten recognized his own recorded voice, most failed to recognize their own profiles, hands, mirrored hand writing, or speaking rhythm. Half failed to identify their storytelling style. But perversely, every person recognized his own gait, though he had probably never seen it before.

Jekyll v. Hyde. Said one woman, listening unaware to her own voice (which other observers described as "tender, shy, lovely"): "A discouraged person, cowardly, and an unstable character." Said another woman, looking at her own hands: "Unintelligent . . . brutally sensual." Cried another, confronted by her handwriting: "The writing is so thin--dash it--that one cannot see it. It makes me quite dizzy. I cannot say anything about this handwriting. . . . No, leave me alone, please."

Trickiest stunt Wolff used was to split a full-faced picture down the middle, reverse one half and match it with the same half by montage, so that the picture was composed of two right sides or two left. The right side, he found, tends to be dominant, gives the face its most characteristic expression (the mouth usually is most expressive).

Result, in many cases, was a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde contrast between the right-right and left-left pictures. Most subjects violently disliked one, liked the other. Said a schizophrenic murderer, looking at his right-right face: "This man has a psychic trouble, but he is intelligent." Said a woman with a persecution mania, of her own left-left face: "There might be such people, but they must be rare."

Reaction. Psychologist Wolff noted some striking facts about his guinea pigs' unconscious self-analysis : when they failed to recognize themselves, they reacted much more strongly to their own voices or features than to others'. They emphatically liked or disliked their own features (usually they liked them), discussed them more volubly and emotionally if they did not recognize them. Dr. Wolff concluded that unconsciously these self-critics did recognize themselves, and their self-criticisms, which often differed in degree but not in kind from the judgments of their fellows, represented their subconscious appraisals of themselves.

Psychologist Wolff reports that this finding was confirmed by an anthropologist studying African savages. The anthropologist photographed Kais tribesmen, who had never seen themselves in a mirror, and showed them the pictures. One tribesman, when he saw himself, screamed: "Kill this disgusting animal!"

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