My work primarily based around 3D reconstruction of human faces from photos. It's a machine learning problem, and we have quite good results at www.3D-Avatar-Store.com. I have personally performed thousands of 3D reconstructions of people, and have developed a pretty good intuitive sense about a person from their facial photo.
Of particular interest has been reconstructing twins and near age siblings at different points in their lives. From my experience, the strongest drivers of facial appearance I've found are, in order:
1) genetics & ethnic background
2) attitude (not life style, but life perspective)
3) life style
In #1, I see very little variation between children of similar ethnic backgrounds. And when I say "little variation", I mean in the formal sense, from the facial recognition coefficients. Children are interesting in their facial photos often clearly indicate how they will progress through #2.
I'm yet to read formal observations of my #2; It is very clear to me when creating reconstructions of real people, it is their "attitude" they wear on their face day after day that by the time an individual reaches adulthood that "look" is impressed on their face. And this "look" tends to increase over time and age, unless a major attitude adjustment takes place.
I see #3 as a strong influence to facial appearance, but it is driven by #2, so I consider attitude to be the #1 driver of facial appearance which an individual can have control over (short of surgery).
Of particular interest has been reconstructing twins and near age siblings at different points in their lives. From my experience, the strongest drivers of facial appearance I've found are, in order:
1) genetics & ethnic background 2) attitude (not life style, but life perspective) 3) life style
In #1, I see very little variation between children of similar ethnic backgrounds. And when I say "little variation", I mean in the formal sense, from the facial recognition coefficients. Children are interesting in their facial photos often clearly indicate how they will progress through #2.
I'm yet to read formal observations of my #2; It is very clear to me when creating reconstructions of real people, it is their "attitude" they wear on their face day after day that by the time an individual reaches adulthood that "look" is impressed on their face. And this "look" tends to increase over time and age, unless a major attitude adjustment takes place.
I see #3 as a strong influence to facial appearance, but it is driven by #2, so I consider attitude to be the #1 driver of facial appearance which an individual can have control over (short of surgery).