Study Confirms That Cars Have Personalities 213
Ponca City, We love you writes "A study has confirmed that many people see human facial features in the front ends of automobiles and ascribe various personality traits to cars. Forty study participants assessed cars based on a system known as geometric morphometrics by viewing high-resolution, 3D computer reconstructions and printed images of 38 actual 2004-06 car models and rating each model on 19 traits such as dominance, maturity, gender, and friendliness, and if they liked the car. Study participants liked best the cars scoring high in the so-called power traits — the most mature, masculine, arrogant, and angry-looking ones. Researchers theorized that over evolutionary time, humans have developed a selective sensitivity to features in the human face that convey information on sex, age, emotions, and intentions. The lead researcher explained, 'Seeing too many faces, even in mountains or toast, has little or no penalty, but missing or misinterpreting the face of a predator or attacker could be fatal.'"
Re:Of course... (Score:2, Interesting)
Japanese cars seem to go for this. The most blatant example is the Miata.
http://www.pinkmiata.com/images/miata_face.jpg [pinkmiata.com]
There's another one I can find now where if you look at the headlights there's a smiley face. It's more subtle than the Miata, in fact you don't notice until someone points it out.
Which makes you wonder if the machines will exploit this sort of this thing when they take over, e.g. by making Terminators look non threatening.
There's a reason some cars cost more than others.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Still interesting (Score:1, Interesting)
It's all about the eyes... (Score:1, Interesting)
Just as an example, if the headlights are squat and wide -- maybe slanted downward toward the middle -- the car looks angry. If the headlights are far apart, big and round, slanted upward toward the middle -- the car looks friendlier. It doesn't take a study to figure that out.
With that in mind, I wonder how people on the autistic spectrum view the personality of a car. Given that one of the difficulties of ASD is reading people based on their actions and appearance, I'm assuming the same 'problem' would appear with personifying cars too?
Re:All cars look like animals (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:There's a reason some cars cost more than other (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure. So most German car manufacturers like Audi, VW, BMW and Mercedes will give you 10+ years of warranty on the chassis of the car because they all know that their cars will turn to rust in 5 or 6 years?
Now the body work, that's interesting... Most European cars nowadays will have more plastic for body work than anything else, if you look at Renault for instance, it's pure plastic. This is done to protect the driver and fellow road users on impact. The car will simply shred.
As an added bonus, since it's Not Metal (TM), it don't rust. BMW is currently investigating the use of cloth, enforced with carbon, which can shape-shift for their bodies, so I'm really wondering what the hell you're basing your claims on.
Now I'm not going to diss on KIA. I've been driving a Hyundai i30 to great satisfaction for a while, and lord knows Toyota's never ever break, so I have no beef with Asian cars. I do however observe that KIA and Mazda are behind on their materials. Toyota and Honda aren't, or less so, but KIA, Hyundai and Mazda feel a lot more "Tin-Can-ish" than their modern European counterparts.
IANACE though. I am not a car expert though. But then I don't make categorical statements without any back up. :-D
Re:Dupe (Score:3, Interesting)
Only if those inanimate objects are naturally occurring. Inanimate objects created by other humans who may have (consciously or not) reflected those qualities in the object with their design may indeed deserve such recognition.