Judging a person simply by his appearance has long been a problem of society. It often involves creating a presumption that the exterior manifestation is equivalent to the interior qualities of an individual, such as intelligence, maturity and kindness (Rumsey and Harcourt, 2005). The way of communicating to a person is also influenced by the impression a person makes on the individual. It has been determined that judging a person by the cover or his appearance is an instinctive trait among human beings and that this has even been observed as early as the Cro-Magnon era of human evolution.It has been observed that humans are strongly influenced by face reading, which mainly involved a construction of an image in the mind of the beholder, of the individual being observed.

Such mental imagery, which is created in the brain within a few seconds, includes the general physical attributes of the person being observed. Such attributes include the facial features, the color of the skin, the build, size and height of the body, the quality of the hair and the clothing of the individual. Research analysis has described two major types of facial reading.The instinctual form of face reading has been employed by individuals since ancient times and this generally involves the determination of the individual’s gender, age, race and emotional, physical and mental conditions (Rosetree, 2001).

This type of facial reading is commonly credible yet is often misused by individuals at particular circumstances. A good example here is that healthy normal individuals find it easy to determine if a person is a little boy or a little girl, or if an individual is happy or sad, or if a person is a male or a female.Unfortunately, this simple type of facial reading involves abusing one’s abilities for face reading and think that one can easily determine whether an individual is honest, intelligent or kind, just based on the physical appearance of a person. Hence, even before communicating with another individual, a person mentally prepares questions or statements that he would like to say to the other person.

Unfortunately, a shabbily dressed person will be spoken to by another individual, who already has a mental judgment of the person, with dense topics such as the weather or the food that is being served at a dinner party. The opposite response will be observed if a person is smartly dressed in a business suit. An individual that carries a notion of what the other person might be and will in turn talk about what businesses are going strong at the moment and any other topics that are considered of a higher class.The misuse and abuse of facial reading often over-generalizes any features that they see in the other individual.

For example, any harmless imperfections in the face of an individual are often translated to mental or physical illnesses. Sadly, such prejudice is often present in the human society for several centuries. The second type of direct reading is also known as physiognomy or personology, which involves the prediction of one’s fortune based on one’s appearance (Zebrowitz, 1997).This type of facial reading is generally common in Asia and is very similar to palm reading, meaning that the predictions are not accurately and are just based on guesses made by the beholder or observer.

It is sad to realize the pre-judgment of people is common in the human society. There are also stereotypes of racial groups which are actually not based on the true culture but actually centered only on the physical appearance of particular ethnicities. Should there be a way to stop such judgment, there will be less anger in bitterness in the world and possibly more compassion among fellow men.