Edited by: Carl Senior, Aston University, UK
Reviewed by: David Perrett, University of St. Andrews, UK; Nicholas O. Rule, University of Toronto, Canada
*Correspondence: Brian R. Spisak, Department of Management and Organization, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands e-mail:
This article was submitted to the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Previous research indicates that followers tend to contingently match particular leader qualities to evolutionarily consistent situations requiring collective action (i.e., context-specific cognitive leadership prototypes) and information processing undergoes categorization which ranks certain qualities as first-order context-general and others as second-order context-specific. To further investigate this contingent categorization phenomenon we examined the “attractiveness halo”—a first-order facial cue which significantly biases leadership preferences. While controlling for facial attractiveness, we independently manipulated the underlying facial cues of health and intelligence and then primed participants with four distinct organizational dynamics requiring leadership (i.e., competition vs. cooperation between groups and exploratory change vs. stable exploitation). It was expected that the differing requirements of the four dynamics would contingently select for relatively healthier- or intelligent-looking leaders. We found perceived facial intelligence to be a second-order context-specific trait—for instance, in times requiring a leader to address between-group cooperation—whereas perceived health is significantly preferred across all contexts (i.e., a first-order trait). The results also indicate that facial health positively affects perceived masculinity while facial intelligence negatively affects perceived masculinity, which may partially explain leader choice in some of the environmental contexts. The limitations and a number of implications regarding leadership biases are discussed.
Investigating evolved cognitive mechanisms mediating the connection between environmental triggers and leadership emergence is a burgeoning field that works to add a biologically inspired expansion to traditional models of contingent and implicit leadership (e.g., Fiedler,
Such psychological adaptations are arguably part of the human evolutionary trajectory toward increasingly complex social group strategies as a means to maintain and increase fitness in competitive environments (e.g., Couzin et al.,
There is also the need to effectively divide the investment of time and energy between finding new resources vs. extracting rewards from existing resources—known as the “Exploration-Exploitation Dilemma” in the organizational science literature (March,
It is argued that (1) leadership (i.e., the ability to influence others and act as a focal point of coordinated behavior to achieve group objectives; e.g., Yukl,
Research on shared leadership, where distributing leadership across a number of individuals can significantly enhance group performance (e.g., Carson et al.,
To understand this cognitive process one must first consider how such contingencies are executed to produce leadership emergence. A prominent cue for this purpose is the human face, which provides a wealth of information about an individual, including information about character traits and genetic fitness (Bruce and Young,
The face stores a significant amount of useable data for context-specific leadership decision-making. Qualities such as facial femininity or perceived age can have a significant impact on who followers endorse as a leader in different situations because these visual signals can serve as a proxy for latent behavioral potential (e.g., Little et al.,
A first-order facial cue that appears to generally (and positively) influence the perception of others is attractiveness—known as the “attractiveness halo” (see Moore et al.,
This approach generates a number of relevant questions regarding implicit leadership processes. For instance, based on an implicit match between contextual requirements and distinct qualities associated with cues of intelligence and health, will leaders who look relatively more intelligent be favored in situations where experience or knowledge is more important and will group members be more likely to follow healthier-looking leaders in physically demanding circumstances? In addition, given that these cognitive contingencies would have developed over the course of human evolution, will they still hold in modern organizational settings? Signals of health are perhaps exceptionally important in dynamics which traditionally required a leader to exert an increased amount of physical energy such as during intergroup conflict. However, modern competition does
In the current paper we work to further our understanding of leadership by activating contemporary versions of the coordination problems described above (i.e., competition vs. cooperation and exploration vs. exploitation) and pairing these group challenges with faces of potential leaders where first-order attractiveness is controlled for and the subcomponents of health and intelligence are independently manipulated. It is clear that over the course of human evolution, the aggressive nature of
One hundred and 48 participants (79 males, 69 females,
The procedure for the experiment consisted of three separate tasks. First, the facial stimuli used for testing were created. Second, business scenarios based on the coordination problems mentioned above were developed. These materials were then combined to run the experiment. Finally, the created faces were rated by two samples on perceived health, intelligence, masculinity, and attractiveness.
Stimuli were created using Psychomorph (Tiddeman et al.,
Next, each identity was transformed in apparent intelligence. To this end, high and low apparent intelligence prototypes were created as described in Moore et al. (
Third, we next transformed both the high and low intelligence versions of each identity to be high or low on apparent health. To this end, we manipulated the skin areas of each face to appear lower or higher in carotenoid-associated skin coloration, observed following increased fruit and vegetable consumption (see Whitehead et al.,
To sum up the procedure, facial shape was first adjusted to alter perceptions of intelligence, creating high intelligence (Hi) and low intelligence (Li) versions of the base faces. Next, the coloration of Hi and Li facial images where manipulated to create high health (Hh) and low health (Lh) version. This process yielded four face types (i.e., HiHh, LiLh, HiLh, and LiHh; Figure
The next step was to pair the face types with business scenarios based on the four coordination dynamics identified in the introduction (i.e., competition, cooperation, exploration, and exploitation; see Supplemental Materials for the scenarios). The objective was to investigate which subcomponent of attractiveness (i.e., health or intelligence) would be preferred in each coordination dynamic. To accomplish this, each scenario was presented one at a time with one male base face in all possible paired combinations of the four face types presented below, six combinations in total (e.g., HiHh vs. LiLh, HiLh vs. LiHh). We counterbalanced which male base face was paired with which scenario, and also counterbalanced the order in which the different scenarios and different male base faces were presented. Per scenario, participants thus chose their preferred leader out of two faces (both coming from the same base face but transformed differently) six times. Each participants made 24 (6 combinations * 4 scenarios) leadership decisions, either with a transform level of 25%, or a transform level of 50% (transform level varied between subjects).
The scenario appeared at the top of the screen and the participant was presented with the first pair of faces and asked to vote for the face they would prefer as a leader for the depicted scenario (i.e., forced-choice pairing). Once a decision was made, the next face pair would appear below the scenario and the participant would make another leader choice. This procedure continued until all six paired face combinations had been displayed with the scenario. Then the scenario would switch and the procedure would repeat until a decision for all face combinations were made for all four scenarios. Scenarios, face pairings, and side of the monitor where the face appeared were randomized to control for order effects. Scenario and assigned faces were randomized to control for idiosyncratic effects of any one particular face paired with any one scenario. Following the leadership selection task, participants explicitly rated the faces on perceived health, intelligence, attractiveness, and masculinity (e.g., “This person looks attractive,” 1 =
In order to get some insight into how the faces were perceived, we had all faces rated on health, intelligence, masculinity, and attractiveness, by two samples. All ratings were performed on a scale ranging from 1 (
Tables
Health | 6.56 (1.77) | 6.28 (1.81) | |
Intelligence | 6.09 (1.57) | 5.88 (1.61) | |
Attractiveness | 5.34 (1.84) | 5.10 (1.91) | |
Masculinity | 6.60 (1.98) | 6.41 (2.13) | |
Health | 6.54 (1.72) | 6.30 (1.88) | |
Intelligence | 6.17 (1.57) | 5.80 (1.66) | |
Attractiveness | 5.36 (1.86) | 5.07 (1.92) | |
Masculinity | 6.41 (2.06) | 6.60 (2.07) |
Health | 7.37 (1.59) | 6.49 (2.01) | |
Intelligence | 7.00 (1.65) | 6.81 (1.77) | |
Attractiveness | 6.14 (2.01) | 5.63 (2.15) | |
Masculinity | 7.34 (1.76) | 7.03 (1.95) | |
Health | 7.15 (1.75) | 6.70 (1.99) | |
Intelligence | 7.09 (1.80) | 6.71 (1.79) | |
Attractiveness | 6.15 (2.18) | 5.63 (2.20) | |
Masculinity | 6.98 (1.97) | 7.39 (1.96) |
It is also interesting to consider the different perceptions of the two opposed-combination faces, i.e., the low intelligence but high health face (LiHh), and the high intelligence but low health face (HiLh). First, the high health but low intelligence face is perceived as more masculine in both samples [sample 1 −
To analyze the data we utilized a version of the Bradley-Terry Model which uses a log-linear approach to account for the dependence between multiple paired comparisons from a given set of objects (Dittrich et al.,
On average (taken across all 4 scenarios), health had a significant positive effect on leader selection [Wald χ2(
Health was a significant predictor of leadership ratings in all four scenarios; in cooperation [Wald χ2(
Because we summed across the medium and strong manipulation in the above analyses, we wanted to make sure that there were no interactions of manipulation strength with intelligence or health on leader selection; a significant interaction would imply we need to look at the medium and strong manipulation conditions separately. We performed another analysis across all 4 scenarios together, adding the interaction terms (manipulation strength * intelligence, and manipulation strength * health) to the model. There was no significant interaction between health and manipulation strength on leader selection [Wald χ2(
We then wanted to see whether one cue had a stronger effect on decision making than the other. Health was the stronger predictor for the exploration scenario [
We next tested whether health and intelligence had a stronger effect in one scenario relative to another. We were interested in two particular comparisons: the effects of health and intelligence in the competitive vs. the cooperative scenario—tested by combining the data of these two scenarios and testing the interaction between health/intelligence and scenario on leader selection—and the effects of health and intelligence in the exploration vs. exploitation scenario—again, tested by combining the data of these two other scenarios and testing the interaction between health/intelligence and scenario on leader selection. As expected, intelligence was a stronger predictor in the cooperation scenario than in the competition scenario [Wald χ2(
Table
High Health wins from Low Health | 69.4 | 68.7 | 67.3 | 71.9 | 69.8 |
High Intelligence wins from Low Intelligence | 63.8 | 53.7 | 70.1 | 73.1 | 58.0 |
To summarize, health and intelligence both influenced leader selection, but the health cue (facial color) was clearly more influential than the intelligence cue (facial structure) in our scenarios. Health was an influential cue across all scenarios, while intelligence only had an effect in half of the presented scenarios. Overall, health was a significantly stronger predictor of leader selection than intelligence, except for in the cooperation context, where intelligence and health were predictors of similar strength. Our results indicate a stronger general preference for health vs. intelligence when selecting leaders across context.
As for our hypotheses, we found mixed support. In leader selection, cues of intelligence, as expected, were preferred more often in cooperation vs. competition whereas perceived health was significantly favored across all four coordination problems. As for exploration vs. exploitation, to date, it has had limited research attention in the behavioral and brain sciences (Cohen et al.,
While the facial health and intelligence manipulations predictably affected participants' ratings of perceived health and intelligence, it is important to note that the manipulations also affected perceptions on other dimensions, such as attractiveness and masculinity. It is apparent from our results that our transforms did change perceptions of attractiveness. However, this was the objective of our research (i.e., to assess which specific dimensions of attractiveness affect leadership perception). We also note in our results that perceptions of attractiveness did
The ratings of faces high in one positive cue but low in another positive cue—i.e., HiLh vs. LiHh—have additional implications. The ratings from two separate samples suggest that picking up on a high health cue (facial coloration) seems more difficult when the facial structure is characteristic of low intelligence, and vice versa, picking up on cues for high intelligence seems more difficult when there is a clear competing cue for low health. However, when a face has low intelligence combined with high health facial coloration, perceptions of masculinity are particularly enhanced. These results demonstrate how a facial cue can have different effects when combined with other cues, and that novel perceptions may arise from a specific combination of cues—an interesting avenue for future research.
Like much previous research, our results demonstrate that morphological cues can guide decision making when it comes to leadership. From an organizational science perspective, this means that, for instance, leadership succession planning, external hiring of managers and executives, and general willingness to follow a leader are likely biased by a variety of such cues. We must then account for these biases and work with or around such cognitive shortcuts. As an example, a relatively healthy-looking leader may have a better chance of gaining sufficient levels of followership investment to initiate change. On the other hand, a potential leader who looks relatively less healthy may be overlooked even if they are better suited for the job—the difference between emergence and effectiveness.
There are also a number of limitations to the current study that deserves mentioning. First, leadership selection for the exploration-exploitation dilemma needs further development. Continued effort is necessary to identify and match the contingent leadership traits associated with both exploration and exploitation. Second, intelligence is a somewhat broad concept. The difference between fluid and crystallized intelligence (i.e., the ability to develop novel solutions to novel problems vs. the ability to use acquired knowledge, skills, and experience; e.g., Cattell,
A modern version of implicit leadership categorization that contingently considers the dynamics of fitness-relevant situations is an effective approach for understanding why certain leaders emerge when they do. Our results demonstrate that when one attempts to split apart perceived facial attractiveness into second-order categories they immediately discover a general preference for health, characterized by facial coloration, when selecting leaders. Thus health is a first-order categorization variable that initially biases us to perceive a potential candidate as a leader in general or
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: