Orthognathic Surgery Has a Significant Positive Effect on Perceived Personality Traits and Perceived Emotional Expressions in Long Face Subjects

Publication date: Available online 16 October 2018

Source: Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

Author(s): Jeffrey C. Posnick, Brian E. Kinard

Abstract:

Purpose

Crowdsourcing is increasingly being used in medical research to obtain the opinion and perception of laypeople. The investigators hypothesized that a layperson's perception of a long-face dentofacial deformity (DFD) patient is more favorable after orthognathic surgery than before surgery with regard to perceived personality traits and emotional facial expressions.

Methods

The investigators implemented a survey, distributed through Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing platform, to compare 6 perceived personality traits and 6 perceived emotional traits before and after (> 6 months) orthognathic surgery in subjects through standardized photographs (3 facial views). The sample was composed of 20 subjects randomly selected from our long-face DFD database, treated by one surgeon all having undergone bimaxillary and chin orthognathic surgery. The outcome variable was change in each of the 12 perceived personality and emotional traits studied. Descriptive and bivariate statistics were computed. P value less than 0.05 was considered significant.

Results

500 respondents (raters) completed the survey in less than 10 hours. The respondents were male (60%), 25 to 34 year of age (57%), Caucasian (71%), college graduates (53%) with an annual income between $20,000 and $50,000 (48%). After jaw reconstruction and completion of orthodontic treatment, long-face subjects as a group were perceived to be significantly more trustworthy, more friendly, more intelligent, more attractive and more dominant and also as happier and less angry, sad, afraid, or disgusted than they were prior to surgery (p < 0.05).

Conclusion

We confirmed that laypeople consistently report positive changes in a long-face subject's perceived personality traits and perceived emotional expressions after bimaxillary and chin orthognathic surgery.

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