My favorite psychologist Richard Wiseman has teamed up with New Scientist magazine to conduct an interesting looking mass psychology experiment. Participating is simple: you fill in a brief questionnaire and then email in a portrait photograph of yourself. Allegedly, the aim of the experiment is to investigate the relationship between personality and appearance and somehow merging the photos together will aid this endeavor. I, for one, don't buy this for a second: my guess is deception is afoot and that they'll simply throw away most of the answers to the questionnaire and then use the photographs to replicate the finding that average faces are usually judged to be more attractive than almost any individual's face. Whatever the case may be, participate, it'll be fun...
Oh, and I see Wiseman appears on this week's edition of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast. I haven't heard the interview yet, but I'm sure it'll be worth a listen.
For the record, Wiseman tells me (via email) that there is no deception in this experiment: they're going to do exactly what they say they are.
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