Ever wondered why we are attracted to attractive people? There's plenty of research to suggest that facial symmetry and intelligence are linked. And now an article in The Economist, reporting on research by psychologists from Tufts University suggests that people are able to assess a person's competence simply by looking at a still photograph. The team showed 100 undergraduates the faces of cheif executives of the top 25 and the bottom 25 companies in the Fortune 1 000 list. Half the students were asked how good they thought the person there were looking at would be at leading a company and half were asked to rate five personality traits by looking at the photograph - competence, dominance, likeability, facial maturity and trustworthiness. Not surprisingly in this list, all the businessmen were white males - getting rid of confounding variable such as race or gender. The student's observations were apparently surprisingly accurate. The results of the study, which is being published in Psychological science, show that both the student's assessments of the leadership potential of the people in the photographs and their rating of the five personality traits were significantly related to the company's profits. The findings suggest that instant judgments by people who are not aware of a person's position or rank are more accurate than assessments made by people who are supposed to know the people well. According to the study, it looks as though knowing the CEO well actually disrupts the ability to judge his performance. Get a photograph of your potential boss before you meet him (or her, if indeed, this works on women).
Bridget Farham Editor https://www.bizcommunity.com