Evolutionary psychologists do some weird research. But we’re not holding that against them.  I mean, we’re talking about evolution.  Instead, we’ll take what they find and translate it for your use at trial. But this is odd!

Australian researchers (Burke & Sulikowski, 2010) looked at tilting heads and attractiveness in the eyes of observers. What they found was that a tilted head made both men and women seem more attractive. And we know that’s good from a persuasion standpoint. But, men and women have to tilt their heads differently.

What the researchers found is that female faces tilted forward were seen as both more feminine and more attractive and a backward tilt made men look both more masculine and more attractive. They hypothesize this is because men are generally taller than women and used to viewing women’s faces from above while, conversely, women are generally shorter than men and used to looking up at men’s faces.

Frankly, we wish there was an accompanying video to illustrate these head positions so we could tell you for sure how to hold your head while you are wearing red and striking a power pose. You would be unstoppable.

Note: Tilting your head should not be confused with whipping your hair as nobly illustrated by Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young & Bruce Springsteen here.

Darren Burke, & Danielle Sulikowski (2010). A New Viewpoint on the Evolution of Sexually Dimorphic Human Faces. Evolutionary Psychology, 8 (4).

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1. RonaldVMillerJr says:

   December 12, 2010 at 2:31 AM

   RT @KeeneTrial: Yesterday's blog post: SIMPLE JURY PERSUASION: TILT YOUR HEAD. (NO KIDDING) http://bit.ly/gdHQXl #law #legal #persuasion