Still, even if we accept that WHR tells us something about a person's inclination to act recklessly on their desires, it doesn't tell us anything about pedophiles specifically. "It's probably only important when confronted by a stranger, because in our evolutionary history you had to make a snap decision whether to fight or to flee… it would have been worth your while to err on the side of caution." ![]() "We're prone to stereotype and over-generalize about who might be aggressive, but it still begs the question, 'Where does the stereotype come from?' I try to be skeptical, but I don't think we would have found such consistency in results without some kernel of truth to our snap judgements. "But we found that the snap judgements were so consistent from person to person that there does seem to be a good correlation between the relative width of the face and how people form impressions of them. "We were a little worried about the comparison to the early physiognomists," she admitted. I asked Cheryl McCormick, a Canadian neuroscience professor who has also carried out studies showing WHR as a key biomarker for aggressiveness, about what these kinds of findings mean. Is there anything useful to be learned about the quick, near-instant judgements we make about potentially threatening strangers? Anything that might help us understand real risks to children?Īn image from Professor Cheryl McCormick's study I think some of those sort of fairy tale representations of monstrous pedophiles-and all those Stranger Danger public information films-they were there to make adults feel better."īefore dismissing the stereotype entirely, I wondered about the technique of facial profiling. And it hasn't helped us understand risks or keep children safe. "We make them distant figures-the weird-looking guy at the end of the street. "The problem is, that knowledge makes us so uncomfortable we prefer to pretend it's 'those weird monsters over there.' "I think we half-realize that sexual attraction to kids is potentially there in people who look just like us," said Dr. Sarah Goode, author of Paedophiles in Society, if this could have anything to do with the way we assume child sex abusers look. ![]() Best estimates for the number of pedophiles in Britain today place it at a staggering 250,000, with some studies suggesting that 1 percent of all men could experience sexual feelings toward minors. Operation Yewtree's horrendous revelations have begun to indicate the true scale of sexual abuse of children in the UK. Graffiti about the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic church.
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