People whose faces are perceived to look more 'competent' are more likely to be CEOs of large, successful companies. Having a face that people deem 'dominant' is a predictor of rank advancement in the military. People are more likely to invest money with people who look 'trustworthy.' These sorts of findings go on and on in recent studies that claim people can accurately guess a variety of personality traits and behavioral tendencies from portraits alone. The findings seem to elucidate either canny human intuition or absurd, misguided bias.

The above chart again shows Architects, Logicians, Logisticians, and Virtuosos being relatively challenged when it comes to body language. However, Mediators (INFP), Defenders (ISFJ), and Adventurers (ISFP) are also notably less likely than Extraverted personality types to agree.

There has been a recent boom in research on how people attribute social characteristics to others based on the appearance of faces—independent of cues about age, gender, race, or ethnicity. (At least, as independent as possible.) The results seem to offer some intriguing insight, claiming that people are generally pretty good at predicting who is, for example, trustworthy, competent, introverted or extroverted, based entirely on facial structure. There is strong agreement across studies as to what facial attributes mean what to people, as illustrated in renderings throughout this article. But it's, predictably, not at all so simple.

• Some of the Best Poker Players are Introverted It is true that some of the top players in the global poker arena are introverts. This does not necessarily mean that introverts are better at poker.
• Sep 22, 2020 (This may be Howard spinning a story: when asked about the falling out in 2019, Winkler replied with an exaggerated poker face: “I got along great with the dog.”.

Christopher Olivola, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, makes the case againstface-ism today, in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. In light of many recent articles touting people's judgmental abilities, Olivola and Princeton University's Friederike Funk and Alexander Todorov say that a careful look at the data really doesn't support these claims. And 'instead of applauding our ability to make inferences about social characteristics from facial appearances,' Olivola said, 'the focus should be on the dangers.'

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Recommended Reading

• The Next Six Months Will Be Vaccine Purgatory

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• The Vaccine Is Here. Now for the Hard Part.

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By systematically altering or selecting the faces that participants are presented with, researchers have been able to examine how variations in facial appearance bias human decisions. These studies have shown not just correlations, but causal evidence that facial appearances influence voting, economic exchanges, and legal judgments. People tend to draw inferences about personality characteristics, above and beyond what we might assume based on things like gender, ethnicity, or expression. Social attributions from faces alone tend to be constructed from how common facial features are within a culture, cross-cultural norms (e.g., inferences on masculinity/femininity), and idiosyncrasies like resemblance to friends, colleagues, loved ones, and, importantly, ourselves. Olivola's research has shown that these facial attributions people make have serious implications for how people are treated, and their outcomes in life. The especially unfortunate part of these inferences is how heavily they factor into critical decisions, in lieu of actual facts.

'The fact that social decisions are influenced by facial morphology would be less troubling if it were a strong and reliable indicator of people’s underlying traits,' the researchers write in today's article. 'Unfortunately, careful consideration of the evidence suggests that it is not.'

The primary problem is that people feel they have this sense, and they ignore other relevant information, Olivola said. Politics is a great example. His research has shown that politicians whose facial structure is deemed to look more competent are more likely to win elections. (They use actual politicians in these studies. Fortunately for researchers, Olivola noted, most Americans don't know who most congressional candidates are.) But that sense of competence in a face amounts to nothing. 'We really can't make a statement on that,' he said. 'What's an objective measure of competence?'

Olivola has also done studies that show in conservative-leaning states, finding that the more 'traditionally Republican' a person's face is deemed to look, the more votes he/she gets. Even if they're a Democrat. And the correlation between facial competence and vote share is strongest among voters who are lacking in political knowledge.

This suggests two solutions: Either make sure people don't see the candidates, an amazing but obviously impossible idea, or make sure people are educated—that they know what the candidates are about. That significantly reduces the biasing effect of facial competence.

Personality traits are also fraught, in that most studies rely on self-reported personality tests. 'If I rate myself as extroverted and I try to look it in my pictures, you might rate me that way, but it doesn't mean I am.' If there was some actual measure, like that when a person goes to parties, they make X number of friends, then we could start to talk about accuracy. But really, these studies just affirm that people see themselves the same way others see them.

All that these studies really tell us, Olivola said, is 'I've managed to fool you into thinking I'm extroverted, because that's how I like to be seen.' Of course I want everyone to think I'm intelligent and fun, and I like to think I am—'

'I'm sure you are,' I said.

'So this is kind of dangerous,' he continued after a beat. 'I mean, is it wise for us to tell people, 'Oh, yeah, people are great at telling political orientation on the basis of faces.' If someone looks like they're conservative, or if they look like they're gay or whatever, it's totally okay for you to think you're probably right? We need to be more careful about that. It makes for great articles and everything, but when you look at the data critically, it paints a much less generous picture of the human ability to draw accurate inferences from faces. We need a lot of strong evidence before putting that message out there.'

So this interesting research walks a thin line between relevant psychology and physiognomy. In the 1883 textbookTypes of Insanity: An illustrated guide to the physical diagnosis of mental disease, Dr. Allan Hamilton wrote of a time when psychiatric practice was largely based on appearances. 'When one walks through the wards of any asylum for the insane,' Hamilton wrote, 'he will be immediately impressed with the repulsiveness of the faces about him.' The doctor includes characteristic sketches of people with melancholia, idiocy, imbecility, and mania—recognizable in a patient with 'brows being corrugated, teeth covered by compressed lips, [and] eyes widely open.'

In an article in Annual Review of Psychology earlier this year, Olivola and a separate group of Princeton colleagues made a similar point about the treacherous grounds on which this research treads. They address that countless papers have recently been written claiming that people can reliably judge a variety of traits and characteristics from facial morphology alone, arguing that a critical reexamination of the methods and findings in many of these studies paint a much less favorable picture. Though in that review, the team concedes that some of these structural cues 'could have a kernel of truth,' they are largely a judgmental illusion. They note that in criminal cases, facial appearances often predict sentencing decisions, judgments of guilt, and punishment severity. The most interesting, but also troubling, aspects of human judgment and decision making is how fallible and inconsistent it can be. The researchers also offer the additional caveat: 'In real-life situations, people do not interact with disembodied faces.'

Don't we?

Being an introvert can be tough in the best of times, but it can be even tougher when you like to gamble.

I think one of the biggest problems with gambling has always been its tendency to lean toward the tastes of the extrovert. Casinos themselves are very much the kind of places that extroverts want to be. They’re filled with light and sound; they’ve got drinks flowing and interesting people walking around. The dealers tend to be conversational and are happy to engage with you.

For an introvert, this can be a nightmare.

Now, before I jump into my list of the top 5 casino games for introverts, I want to take a little detour and talk about something that makes gambling a lot more enjoyable (and way less stressful) for introverts.

The internet was and is a revolution, and nowhere did the revolution seem to really take hold more than in online gambling. Online gambling has only grown in the years that have passed since the internet was born, and for someone like me (who prefers to stay at home over going out into loud, crowded places), online gambling is pretty much the best way to gamble.

Now, that being said, I’m not going to say that it’s perfect. There are a lot of very good reasons why you might want to gamble in person. One of the biggest problems that I run into with online poker in particular is that the free games and the cheap games tend to have a lot of players who really mess around.

And look, I get it—when you’re playing for literal pennies, it’s hard to take things seriously and easy to go all in on just about every hand. That being said, if you enjoy poker but want to play seriously for a low amount of money, online gambling may not be the way to go. But for so many other games, online gambling is a great option.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I want to talk about the casino games that are great for introverts.

1. Video Poker – Best Game to Play If You’re an Introvert

There are a number of reasons I recommend video poker for the introvert.

First and foremost, you can play it by yourself. Even if you play at a land-based casino instead of online, no one is bothering you (except for the occasional waitress, and really, they’re there to make your time a little better!). You can sit at your chosen machine as long as you like. If you get tired of that machine or become convinced that this is a losing machine and you need to move, you totally can.

While this might be more than enough for most introverts to make their way to the casino and plop down in front of a video poker machine, there’s another great reason to play video poker over just about every other game in the casino—the low house edge.

Many games that you’ll find in a casino are going to have a pretty high house edge. A house edge is effectively the percentage of your money that the house wins on average over time. So a house edge of 1% means that if you bet an average of $500 per hour, the house wins about $5 of your money during that hour. Obviously, this doesn’t happen precisely over such a short period of time, but the longer you play and the more you play, the more you’ll see this drain of resources happen.

Some games have really bad house edges, but video poker is actually one of the best. Sitting in front of a video poker machine for hours at a time is going to cost you just like any other casino game, but it’s not going to cost you nearly as much as playing roulette, for example.

Poker Face App

2. Slots – Great for Introverts but Not for Bank Accounts

If video poker just isn’t your thing, I think the next obvious choice for introverts is going to be the slot machine. I usually push people away from these things because they tend to have the worst house edge of any game in the casino, but for the introvert who just wants to have a little fun (and understands that this is a place of entertainment and that the goal is to pay to have a good time), I think slot machines can actually be a good choice.

Just like video poker, slot machines allow you to play at your own pace without people around pushing you to move faster than you want to. As an introvert, I can tell you that even the mere presence of other people (even if they’re not engaging with me at all) can be a drain and a distraction. Slot machines don’t have this problem.

Now, again, just like with video poker, you’re going to need to deal with the waiters or waitresses every now and then, but that’s going to be the extent of your human interaction.

Still, all of this does assume that you’re sitting alone—and not next to a Talkative Terry. The good thing about that situation though is that most casinos have hundreds or thousands of machines, so you can just get up to “go to the bathroom” and find another machine.

Alternatively, there are many engaging online slots games. Even better, if you want to play from your phone, there are plenty of great slot machine apps you can check out and play at your leisure.

Roulette isn’t known for having the best odds in the casino, but it’s not known for having the worst odds either, so it’s got a leg up on a lot of the other table games (and especially keno) in terms of how much money you might actually lose.

The house edge depends on how many zeros the roulette wheel has. Single zero has a better house edge (for you) than double zero. Either way, you’re still under around 7%, which is terrible compared to blackjack but a small price to pay to keep people from bothering you.

Poker Face Introverts Meaning

Here’s why I think roulette is actually a great game for introverts—there’s very little conversation that needs to happen when you play, and once you learn all the different types of bets that are possible, you can pretty much play without any interaction with the dealer (or anyone else).

Because it’s basically you against the wheel in this game, you don’t have to interact with other people, either. Once you place your bet, the wheel spins, and you win or lose. There are no questions from the dealer about what you want to do, and you don’t have to make any plays or strategize. You put down the money and let it ride!

4. Mini Baccarat – Complicated but Great If You’re an Introvert

Just because you’re an introvert doesn’t mean you can’t play something complicated! While it is the case that the easiest games to play also tend to be the ones with the least human interaction, there are still some more complex games that you can play that still manage to keep the chatting to a minimum, and one of those games is Mini Baccarat. Fortunately, the dealer does all the complicated stuff in this game, meaning Mini Baccarat is actually very straightforward for the player.

I like Mini Baccarat because the rules are fairly simple and because the types and number of bets that are possible are limited. This reduction in options means you can sit down and start playing when you’ve never played before and get a good handle on how the game works without feeling too much pressure.

Poker Face Introverts Game

You pretty much have three bets when you play, so it’s hard to make a mistake and feel foolish. You don’t have to make too many decisions, either, which is something that can get introverts feeling overwhelmed.

5. Poker – Might Actually Be a Great Game for Introverts

Now, hear me out.

I know that this sounds crazy. As an introvert myself, I know exactly what you’re thinking. “Poker? The game that probably has the most human interaction of all the games in the casino?!”

Here’s why I think poker can actually be great for introverts—it’s a chance for you to win.

Most of the other games on this list pretty much depend on luck. Poker isn’t all about skill, but it requires a lot more skill than the vast majority of casino games. What gives the introverted poker player an edge is that they can short-circuit the extroverts’ playstyle and strategy and win big.

Poker Face Introverts Meaning

Many extroverts thrive on conversation, on excitement, on talking and laughing and generally getting that energy flowing. When they play poker, they’re looking for other people at the table to feed them with their own energy.

But you’re not having it. You’re keeping quiet, not responding to their jokes or attempts to engage. You’re focused on the game. You might be so annoyed with these people that you end up focusing entirely on your cards—and consequently become very hard to read.

Poker Face Introverts Quotes

Your lack of interaction gives you a great poker face, and it also can get extroverts so upset that they go on tilt and start making mistakes.

I know it sounds crazy, but give it a try—you might just walk away with a huge pot and a big smile on your face.

Are there any other games you think are great for introverts? Let me know in the comments! And if you like the idea of giving online gambling a try, but don’t know where to start, check out our list of the best online casinos.