You may be able to guess at the type of childhood someone had by analyzing their facial symmetry, according to a study published in the Economics and Human Biology.
After analyzing 15 facial features, it was noted that facial asymmetry – particularly among males – is an indication of a difficult and deprived childhood, reports Medical News Today.
Researchers suggest that specific factors – nutrition, disease, socioeconomic status, and exposure to pollution and cigarette smoke – affect the facial features.
"Symmetry in the face is thought to be a marker of what is called developmental stability – the body’s ability to withstand environmental stressors and not be knocked off its developmental path,” said senior researcher Professor Ian Deary at the University of Edinburgh.
“We wondered whether facial symmetry would faintly record either the stressors in early life, which we thought might be especially important, or the total accumulated effects of stressors through the lifecourse.
“The results indicated that it is deprivation in early life that leaves some impression on the face. The association is not very strong, meaning that other things also affect facial symmetry too."
Even those who went on to become wealthy in adulthood still maintained the distinctive asymmetrical features of their tough childhoods.
These findings were reported after scientists analyzed the features of 292 people from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1921 – a study that tracks people throughout their lives. Similar associations were found among females, but they were less pronounced.
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