Just read an interesting article in The Economist (January 26, 2008; page 78) that had people rate the leadership abilities and other personality traits of CEO’s by looking at their picture. And the findings suggest that these instant judgements are more accurate than assessments by experts.
The study that is going to be published in Psychology Today, asked 100 undergraduate students to look at the faces of CEO’s from the top 25 and the bottom 25 companies of the Fortune 1000 list. Half the students were asked how good they thought the person they were looking at would be at leading a company and the other half were asked to rate 5 personality traits – namely, competence, dominance, likeability, facial maturity and trustworthiness. Since all the CEO’s were white & male, the possible impact of these variables did not play a part in the study. As The Economist puts it “both the students’ assessments of the leadership potential of bosses and their ratings for the traits of competence, dominance and facial maturity were significantly related to a company’s profits.” Trustworthiness and likeability, however, were not linked to the company’s profits.
Wonder what a study like this would show in the public sector. Just food for thought!
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