Ugliness and crime

An article last year in The Review of Economics and Statistics reported that the least attractive people are 1.5 per cent more likely to have committed robbery, 2.2 per cent more likely to have committed assault and 3 per cent more likely to have sold drugs. The study concluded that “ugly people need a bit less condemnation and a bit more understanding”.

These findings are a relatively recent contribution to the science of anthropometry, which attempts to use measurements of individuals to understand human physical variation. It is commonly used today in industrial design, clothing design, ergonomics and architecture, where data about the distribution of body dimensions across the population are used to optimise products.

The more narrowly focused science of physiognomy attempts to assess character or personality from a person’s appearance,  particularly the face. The ancient Greeks were early proposers of a link between face and character, with the school of Aristotle writing a treatise on the subject, “Physiognomonica”.

Physiognomy was taught in universities until Henry VIII outlawed it, along with palmistry, in 1531. But by the 19th century, the more general anthropometry was being used to fight crime. In 1831, Alphonse Bertillon devised a system to identify criminals based on the measurement and recording of criminals’ physical dimensions. This gave French police one of the first criminal identity databases.

In 1876 an Italian professor, Cesare Lombroso, wrote ‘L’uomo delinquente’, based on a study comparing convicts’ features with those of soldiers. He claimed that murderers are more likely to have prominent jaws and that a one-sided grin signifies brutality. His techniques were widely used in Europe until the 1930s, enabling prosecutors to strengthen their cases by claiming, for example, that a flattened nose proved the accused was a thief.