CEOs with pretty faces perform better

Posted by Ricki Sharpe on January 14, 2008
Filed Under Selection

Having a face only a mother could love may prove a disadvantage for budding CEOs. According to a recent study, the performance levels of Americaâ€™s top companies could be related to the appearance of their chief executive officers (CEOs).

Psychologists Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University asked college students to determine which photographs of Fortune 1000 CEOs were characteristic of a leader.

Without knowledge of the pictured individualsâ€™ job titles, and by rating the faces on competence, dominance, likeability, facial maturity and trustworthiness, the students were able to distinguish between the successful and the not-so-successful CEOs.

Despite the ambiguity of the images, which were cropped to the face, put into greyscale and standardised in size, ratings of power and leadership from CEOsâ€™ faces were significantly related to company profits.

“These findings suggest that naive judgements may provide more accurate assessments of individuals than well-informed judgements can,” wrote the authors.

The results are particularly striking given the uniformity of the CEOsâ€™ appearances. The majority of CEOs, who were selected according to their Fortune 1000 ranking, were Caucasian males of similar age.

But Rule said it is difficult to determine how chief executives’ faces reveal their companies’ success level. “Either people who look a certain way are somehow advantaged in achieving in this domain,” he said. “It could just be that people who go through this sort of lifestyle, the rigours of climbing the corporate ladder, develop an appearance that gives off a certain impression.”

The study, which appears in the February 2008 issue of Psychological Science, leaves behind an intriguing question: which came first, the powerful-looking CEO or their successful career?

If you can really judge a book by its cover, companies should be able to save millions of dollars in recruitment and assessment fees just by hiring CEOs with pretty faces.

Reference

Rule, N. O. & Ambady, N. (2008). The Face of Success: Inferences From Chief Executive Officers’ Appearance Predict Company Profits. Psychological Science, 19, 103-108.

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