The Facial Appearance of CEOs: Faces Signal Selection but Not Performance

Research overwhelmingly shows that facial appearance predicts leader selection. However, the evidence on the relevance of faces for actual leader ability and consequently performance is inconclusive. By using a state-of-the-art, objective measure for face recognition, we test the predictive value of CEOs’ faces for firm performance in a large sample of faces. We first compare the faces of Fortune500 CEOs with those of US citizens and professors. We find clear confirmation that CEOs do look different when compared to citizens or professors, replicating the finding that faces matter for selection. More importantly, we also find that faces of CEOs of top performing firms do not differ from other CEOs. Based on our advanced face recognition method, our results suggest that facial appearance matters for leader selection but that it does not do so for leader performance.

[1]  Nicholas O. Rule,et al.  She’s Got the Look: Inferences from Female Chief Executive Officers’ Faces Predict their Success , 2009 .

[2]  Joyce M. Beggs,et al.  Perceptions Now and Then of Occupational Sex Typing: A Replication of Shinar's 1975 Study , 1993 .

[3]  R. Riggio,et al.  Exploring distance in leader-follower relationships : when Near is Far and Far is Near , 2013 .

[4]  Julian A. Oldmeadow,et al.  Facial Stereotype Visualization Through Image Averaging , 2013 .

[5]  Friederike Funk,et al.  Social attributions from faces bias human choices , 2014, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[6]  A Corporate Beauty Contest , 2015 .

[7]  J. P. Lipton,et al.  Neutral Job Titles and Occupational Stereotypes: When Legal and Psychological Realities Conflict , 1991 .

[8]  L. Spreeuwers.  Fast and Accurate 3 D Face Recognition Using Registration to an Intrinsic Coordinate System and Fusion of Multiple Region Classifiers , 2011 .

[9]  Robert G. Lord,et al.  An information processing approach to social perceptions, leadership and behavioral measurement in organizations. , 1985 .

[10]  A. Todorov,et al.  The functional basis of face evaluation , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[11]  Nicholas O. Rule,et al.  The big man has a big mouth: Mouth width correlates with perceived leadership ability and actual leadership performance , 2016 .

[12]  Reginald B. Adams,et al.  Who may frown and who should smile? Dominance, affiliation, and the display of happiness and anger , 2005 .

[13]  SpreeuwersLuuk.  Fast and Accurate 3D Face Recognition , 2011 .

[14]  Christopher M. Bishop,et al.  Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (Information Science and Statistics) , 2006 .

[15]  Philippe Jacquart,et al.  The far side of leadership: Rather difficult to face , 2013 .

[16]  Peter Mende-Siedlecki,et al.  Social attributions from faces: determinants, consequences, accuracy, and functional significance. , 2015, Annual review of psychology.

[17]  Nicholas O. Rule,et al.  The influence of economic context on the relationship between chief executive officer facial appearance and company profits , 2014 .

[18]  J. Antonakis.  Predictors of leadership: The usual suspects and the suspect traits , 2011 .

[19]  E. King,et al.  What's in a Name? A Multiracial Investigation of the Role of Occupational Stereotypes in Selection Decisions , 2006 .

[20]  J. Montepare,et al.  Faces and first impressions , 2015 .

[21]  Raymond N. J. Veldhuis,et al.  Likelihood-ratio-based biometric verification , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology.

[22]  Christopher Y. Olivola,et al.  Elected in 100 milliseconds: Appearance-Based Trait Inferences and Voting , 2010 .

[23]  B. Spisak.  The General Age of Leadership: Older-Looking Presidential Candidates Win Elections during War , 2012, PloS one.

[24]  Michael P. Haselhuhn,et al.  Bad to the bone: facial structure predicts unethical behaviour , 2012, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[25]  T. Denson,et al.  Evidence from Meta-Analyses of the Facial Width-to-Height Ratio as an Evolved Cue of Threat , 2015, PloS one.

[26]  Nicholas O. Rule,et al.  The Face of Success Inferences from Chief Executive Officers' Appearance Predict Company Profits , 2008 .

[27]  Luuk J. Spreeuwers,et al.  Fast and Accurate 3D Face Recognition , 2011, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[28]  C. Mondloch,et al.  Facial Structure Is a Reliable Cue of Aggressive Behavior , 2009, Psychological science.

[29]  J. Ward,et al.  Increased facial width-to-height ratio and perceived dominance in the faces of the UK's leading business leaders. , 2014, British journal of psychology.

[30]  Panu Poutvaara.  Facial appearance and leadership: An overview and challenges for new research , 2014 .

[31]  L. D. Harmon,et al.  Identification of human faces , 1971 .

[32]  Timothy C. Bates,et al.  No evidence for sexual dimorphism of facial width-to-height ratio in four large adult samples , 2012 .

[33]  Azriel Rosenfeld,et al.  Face recognition: A literature survey , 2003, CSUR.

[34]  Eugene Borgida,et al.  APA handbook of personality and social psychology, Volume 1: Attitudes and social cognition. , 2015 .

[35]  A. Todorov,et al.  Inferences of Competence from Faces Predict Election Outcomes , 2005, Science.

[36]  John Antonakis,et al.  Predicting Elections: Child's Play! , 2009, Science.

[37]  Daniel E. Re,et al.  Facing Fate: Estimates of Longevity From Facial Appearance and Their Underlying Cues , 2015 .

[38]  Patrick J. Flynn,et al.  Overview of the face recognition grand challenge , 2005, 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05).

[39]  M. van vugt,et al.  Leadership, followership, and evolution: some lessons from the past. , 2008, The American psychologist.

[40]  L. Brown,et al.  Interval Estimation for a Binomial Proportion , 2001 .

[41]  Alexander Todorov,et al.  A Statistical Model of Facial Attractiveness , 2011, Psychological science.

[42]  P. D. Cherulnik,et al.  Physical Appearance and Leadership: Exploring The Role of Appearance-Based Attribution in Leader Emergence , 1990 .

[43]  Wilhelm Burger,et al.  Digital Image Processing - An Algorithmic Introduction using Java , 2008, Texts in Computer Science.

[44]  R. L. Dipboye,et al.  Physical Attractiveness Biases in Ratings of Employment Suitability: Tracking Down the “Beauty is Beastly” Effect , 2010, The Journal of social psychology.

[45]  Dawn L. Eubanks,et al.  The many (distinctive) faces of leadership: Inferring leadership domain from facial appearance , 2014 .

[46]  M. Turk,et al.  Eigenfaces for Recognition , 1991, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[47]  Nicholas O. Rule,et al.  Judgments of Power From College Yearbook Photos and Later Career Success , 2011 .

[48]  Christopher Y. Olivola,et al.  Fooled by first impressions? Reexamining the diagnostic value of appearance-based inferences , 2010 .

[49]  Michael P. Haselhuhn,et al.  A Face Only an Investor Could Love , 2011, Psychological science.

[50]  Ronald F. Piccolo,et al.  The bright and dark sides of leader traits: A review and theoretical extension of the leader trait paradigm , 2009 .