| Abstract: | Throughout the history of psychology the controversial belief in a relationship between physical appearance and criminality
has reared its ugly head! Though modern criminologists do not believe that criminals belong to a single physical type, it
is possible that the general public, the police, juries, and so forth, may believe in such relationships and act accordingly.
The present paper describes some investigations of the extent to which the general public and the police believe that ‘the
face fits the crime’. Studies of the facial appearance of prison inmates are reviewed, as is research on the effects of plastic
surgery on prison recidivism rates. The relationship between children’s physical appearance and behavioural abnormalities
is discussed, as is the literature on the way that we react to children as a function of their facial appearance. Studies
concerning society’s reactions to facial disfigurement are presented to show that there may be some support for Cavior, Hayes
and Cavior’s (1975) view that ‘low physical attractiveness contributes to careers of deviancy’. |
