Researchers of a new study found that facial features can be used as accurate predictors of first impressions.

It is a known fact that people are often quick to judge one another based on physical appearances. People often assume whether a person is competent, friendly or trustworthy by the way he or she looks. Though the accuracy of these judgments hasn't been determined yet, researchers say that it plays an important role in our subsequent behavior.

"In everyday life I am not conscious of the way faces and pictures of faces are influencing the way I interact with people," Dr. Tom Hartley, who led the research said in a press statement. "Whether in "real life" or online; it feels as if a person's character is something I can just sense. These results show how heavily these impressions are influenced by visual features of the face -- it's quite an eye opener!"

For the study, researchers from the University of York took ordinary photographs from the web and analyzed physical features of the faces to develop a model that could accurately predict first impressions. Each of the 1,000 faces was described in terms of 65 different features such as "eye height," "eyebrow width" and so on. Researchers found that certain facial features were associated with particular social judgments.

"Showing that even supposedly arbitrary features in a face can influence people's perceptions suggests that careful choice of a photo could make (or break) others' first impressions of you," Richard Vernon, a PhD student who was part of the research team, said in the statement. "We make first impressions of others so intuitively that it seems effortless -- I think it's fascinating that we can pin this down with scientific models. I'm now looking at how these first impressions might change depending on different cultural or gender groups of perceivers or faces."

Findings of the study were published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.