Context-specific effects of facial dominance and trustworthiness on hypothetical leadership decisions

PLoS One. 2019 Jul 29;14(7):e0214261. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0214261. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Social judgments of faces predict important social outcomes, including leadership decisions. Previous work suggests that facial cues associated with perceptions of dominance and trustworthiness have context-specific effects on leadership decisions. Facial cues linked to perceived dominance have been found to be preferred in leaders for hypothetical wartime contexts and facial cues linked to perceived trustworthiness have been found to be preferred in leaders for hypothetical peacetime contexts. Here we sought to replicate these effects using images of women's faces, as previous studies have primarily focused on perceptions of leadership abilities from male faces, with only a handful of these including female faces. Consistent with previous work, a linear mixed effects model demonstrated that more trustworthy-looking faces were preferred in leaders during times of peace and more dominant-looking faces were preferred in leaders during times of war. These results provide converging evidence for context-specific effects of facial cues on hypothetical leadership judgments.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Face*
  • Facial Expression*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Judgment*
  • Leadership*
  • Male
  • Pattern Recognition, Visual / physiology*

Grants and funding

This research was supported by European Research Council grant #647910 KINSHIP to Lisa M DeBruine (https://erc.europa.eu/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.