Research on Perceptions of Strength

Off Topic
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Just came across about some research about estimating the strength of people from photographs showing only their faces. It apparently works pretty well, and works just as well on those who train in the gym, but only when it comes to upper-body strength. Does not work as well on women.

Press release: Public Affairs & Communications | Institutional Advancement

Full paper: http://publishing.royalsociety.org/media/proceedings_b/rspb20081177.pdf

Interesting how this implies that being able to accurately estimate a man’s upper-body strength is more important for survival than being able to estimate lower-body strength. That would explain why you’ve got dozens of guys who don’t train legs for every one who doesn’t train chest.

On a related note, there’s also the recent paper about how broad-faced hockey players get more penalty minutes. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2570531

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I wonder if Asian people scored higher on fighting ability than their strength estimates would suggest because people assumed they all knew kung fu? :slight_smile:

OK, so that’s a different study, it would be be interesting to find out if race / prejudice affects people’s views on combativeness / strength.

I still think the urge to make every day bench and bicepts day is simple douchebaggery, not any evolutionary strategy - most of our ancestors didn’t weight train (if you accept the idea that Milo “invented” it then that only takes up back to ancient Greece, which still leaves a lot of guys called Ug who had to lift and carry heavy shit if they wanted to get stuff done.

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Wasn’t there a thread about this, like, yesterday?

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You’re like a week late dude…