Science
Study: Europeans see faces in car fronts
Vienna | September 26, 2008 12:01:13 AM IST
Austrian researchers say they've discovered one-third of Europeans polled associate a human or animal face with the front of an automobile. Researchers from EFS Consulting, the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Urban Ethology, both in Vienna and the University of Vienna made detailed measurements of car features and then asked people to report the characteristics, emotions, personality traits and attitudes they ascribed to car fronts. They found one-third of those asked associated a human or animal face with at least 90 percent of the cars and all respondents saw headlights as eyes and the grill or air intake as a mouth in more than half of the cars examined. The study's findings showed people most liked cars having a wide stance, narrow windshield or widely spaced, narrow headlights. Cars favored the most had shapes associated with maturity, dominance, masculinity, arrogance and anger. Distinct features in the car fronts correspond to different trait attributions. Thus, humans possibly interpret even inanimate structures in biological terms, which could have implications for driving and pedestrian behavior, the scientists wrote. The research and its findings appear in the journal Human Nature. (UPI)
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