children whose ears stick out may be self conscious but a new study shows that while large ears may catch the eye, the trait doesn’t carry a social stigma in fact, an experiment showed that adults tended to rate children with larger ears as being more intelligent and likeable upon first impressions a desirable attribute: an experiment showed that adults tended to rate children with larger ears as being more intelligent and likeable upon first impressions a stock image is shown  dr ralph litschel, lead author of the study published in the journal jama facial plastic surgery, told livescience: ‘protruding ears catch the eye, but not necessarily the imagination in a negative way’ the facial plastic surgeon at cantonal hospital st gallen in switzerland said that protruding ears may make children seem particularly cute it’s thought that around five per cent of people have large ears in an experiment, scientists photographed 20 children between the ages of five and 19 who were considering surgery to stop their ears protruding as much they made a copy of each photograph and used photoshop to show how the children would look after surgery and showed the pairs of images to 20 volunteers the experts used an eye tracking device to measure which facial features caught the attention of the volunteers and asked them to guess each child’s personality the study showed that protruding ears don't carry a social stigma and it's unknown why it's been thought that they may lead to a biased perception of personality dr litschel said: up to today, popular comic cartoons with prominent ears represent the less intelligent, immature, oddball character, like shrek' a stock image is shown  our ears and nose keep growing as we age, but it's not due to cartilage continuing to grow, as often thought in fact, it's down to gravity, which enables them to elongate by 022 millimetres every year as we age, the collagen and elastic fibres that make up cartilage, begin to disintegrate, causing them to stretch and sag   and appear longer, the medicine journal reported the same problem occurs in our skin, which compounds noses and ears getting longer and because faces become less plump with time, this acts to emphasise the sagging of the ears and nose the results revealed that the observers spent an average of seven seconds looking at each child’s face they spent an average of 10 per cent of that time looking at protruding ears, compared to six per cent for the ears in the photoshopped images, demonstrating that the over sized features did catch their attention the experts said this is because people tend to focus on what is different and novel in a face, as it helps us to recognise others dr litschel said they were surprised to find that the volunteers did not see the protruding ears as an undesirable feature previous studies have shown that beauty influences people’s perception of personality and the volunteers said that the children in the study all looked cute and smart it’s unknown why it has been thought that protruding ears may lead to a biased perception of a person’s personality, but it could hark back to a 1876 study by an italian criminologist called cesare lombroso, who identified criminals by unusual facial features, such as their ears this work suggested that unusual ears went hand in hand with crime dr litschel added: ‘up to today, popular comic cartoons with prominent ears represent the less intelligent, immature, oddball character, like shrek he noted that the results of the study may vary depending on the culture of the volunteers, as, for example, big ears are seen as a sign of good fortune in asia
cantonal hospital st gallen switzerland
plastic surgeon from cantonal hospital st gallen, switzerland found adults tended to rate children with larger ears as being more intelligent and cute  using eye tracking technology they found people's eyes were drawn to larger and protruding ears, but they did see the feature as undesirable  it’s thought that around five per cent of people have large ears 