Looking Leadership in the Face

Abstract

Given what we know about the predictors of leaders’ ability, facial appearance should play a small or a very limited role in observers’ selection of leaders; however, research convincingly shows otherwise. The more distant observers are from leaders or the less information they have about them, the more likely they are to use whatever information is available—including the target’s looks—to make inferences about a leader’s character and competence. In this article, we review which consequential leadership outcomes are predicted by facial appearance. We explain why observers are inclined to make heuristic decisions using facial cues, discuss whether facial appearance carries credible information, and identify the conditions that may attenuate face effects.