I have a speculative (read: probably garbage) theory, orthogonal to the one in this article, that you can get some idea of a person's personality from their looks. My hypothesis is that as long as you are not too young, then the most common expressions that your face assumes - frowning, smiling, scowling etc - have some effect on your wrinkles and facial muscle development. So maybe by looking at someone, you can see some aspect of the history of their facial expressions and hence guess if they are generally a cheerful, miserable or sneering kind of person.<p>A corollary (also probably garbage!) is that one of the clues that helps you guess a person's nationality by looking at them is these similar aspects of 'face-shaping': either through the most common sounds they make while speaking their language, or the typical mannerisms of that culture. Obviously this would only work within a group of people that have broadly similar racial characteristics. My 'sample group' is mainly from western European countries.
There's some (unofficial) theories that you can judge a person's MBTI type by looking at their facial features.<p><a href="http://www.socionics.com/advan/vi/vi.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.socionics.com/advan/vi/vi.htm</a><p>I don't think there's hard evidence of it though - just one's own experiences.<p>I can guess the P/J split (J types have a serious look) and the F/T split (F types usually indicate to you their mood with their expressions) with a quick glance at the face, but haven't done anything in a controlled setting.