The big man has a big mouth: Mouth width correlates with perceived leadership ability and actual leadership performance

Research-Problem Validity in Primary Research: Precision and Transparency in Characterizing Past Knowledge

Four validity types evaluate the approximate truth of inferences communicated by primary research. However, current validity frameworks ignore the truthfulness of empirical inferences that are central to research-problem statements. Problem statements contrast a review of past research with other knowledge that extends, contradicts, or calls into question specific features of past research. Authors communicate empirical inferences, or quantitative judgments, about the frequency (e.g., "few," "most") and variability (e.g., "on the one hand," "on the other hand") in their reviews of existing theories, measures, samples, or results. We code a random sample of primary research articles and show that 83% of quantitative judgments in our sample are vague and do not have a transparent origin, making it difficult to assess their validity. We review validity threats of current practices. We propose that documenting the literature search, reporting how the search was coded, and quantifying the search results facilitates more precise judgments and makes their origin transparent. This practice enables research questions that are more closely tied to the existing body of knowledge and allows for more informed evaluations of the contribution of primary research articles, their design choices, and how they advance knowledge. We discuss potential limitations of our proposed framework.

The effect of facial features on facial anthropomorphic trustworthiness in social robots

As the nature of human-robot relationships have become increasingly bound to shift from supervisor-machine to friend-companion, people have exhibited an increasing interest in making social judgments toward such anthropomorphic objects, such as trustworthiness. However, the facial features of social robots and their potential effect on anthropomorphic trustworthiness are seldom analyzed and discussed comprehensively. This study examined whether the trustworthiness perception toward a social robot shared similarity with baby schema features on the human face. It also explored the effects of different combinations of baby schema facial features, especially the positions and sizes of the eyes and mouth, on facial anthropomorphic trustworthiness. A 5-way mixed experiment (N = 270) was conducted accordingly. The results indicated that people would experience a high level of facial anthropomorphic trustworthiness toward robots with baby schema features (i.e., large eyes, with medium vertical and horizontal positions of the eyes and mouth). This paper contributes to the literature on facial anthropomorphic trustworthiness in human-robot interaction and provides suggestions for social robot design.

E-perceptions and Business 'Mating': The Communication Effects of the Relative Width of Males' Faces in Business Portraits

This study investigates the relative impacts of the facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) on the first impressions business professionals form of business consultants when seeing their photographs on a corporate website or LinkedIn page. By applying conjoint analysis on field experiment data (n = 381), we find that in a zero-acquaintance situation business professionals prefer low-fWHR business consultants. This implies that they prefer a face that communicates trustworthiness to one that communicates success. Further, we have investigated the words that business professionals use to describe their preferred consultant. These approach motivations help practitioners to improve the picture-text alignment. The results underline the necessity to critically assess the pictures and text used on websites and media platforms such as LinkedIn for business purposes, and to see them as a key element of business and self-communication that can be altered in order to improve business 'mating.'

Eyebrows cue grandiose narcissism

OBJECTIVE

Though initially charming and inviting, narcissists often engage in negative interpersonal behaviors. Identifying and avoiding narcissists therefore carries adaptive value. Whereas past research has found that people can judge others' grandiose narcissism from their appearance (including their faces), the cues supporting these judgments require further elucidation. Here, we investigated which facial features underlie perceptions of grandiose narcissism and how they convey that information.

METHOD AND RESULTS

In Study 1, we explored the face's features using a variety of manipulations, ultimately finding that accurate judgments of grandiose narcissism particularly depend on a person's eyebrows. In Studies 2A-2C, we identified eyebrow distinctiveness (e.g., thickness, density) as the primary characteristic supporting these judgments. Finally, we confirmed the eyebrows' importance in Studies 3A and 3B by measuring how much perceptions of narcissism changed when swapping narcissists' and non-narcissists' eyebrows between faces.

CONCLUSIONS

Together, these data show that distinctive eyebrows reveal narcissists' personality to others, providing a basic understanding of the mechanism through which people can identify narcissistic personality traits with potential application to daily life.

Distinctive Facial Cues Predict Leadership Rank and Selection

Facial appearance correlates with leadership, both in terms of who is chosen (leader selection) and how they do (leader success). Leadership theories suggest that exceptional individuals acquire positions as leaders. Exceptional traits can differ between domains, however, and so the qualities valued in leaders in one occupation may not match those valued among leaders in another. To test this, we compared the relationship between facial appearance and leadership across two domains: law firms and mafia families. Perceptions of power correlated with leadership among law executives whereas social skill correlated with leadership in organized crime. Critically, these traits were distinctive within their respective groups. Furthermore, an experimental test showed that the relative frequency of facial traits in a group can render them either an asset or liability. Perceived leadership ability is therefore enhanced by characteristics that appear unique among individuals who satisfy the basic criteria for their group.

Patterns of correlation of facial shape with physiological measurements are more integrated than patterns of correlation with ratings

This article exploits a method recently incorporated in the geometric morphometric toolkit that complements previous approaches to quantifying the facial features associated with specific body characteristics and trait attribution during social perception. The new method differentiates more globally encoded from more locally encoded information by a summary scaling dimension that is estimated by fitting a line to the plot of log bending energy against log variance explained, partial warp by partial warp, for some sample of varying shapes. In the present context these variances come from the regressions of shape on some exogenous cause or effect of form. We work an example involving data from male faces. Here the regression slopes are steepest, and the sums of explained variances over the uniform component, partial warp 1 and partial warp 2 are greatest, for the conventional body mass index, followed by cortisol and, lastly, perceived health. This suggests that physiological characteristics may be represented at larger scale (global patterns), whereas cues in perception are of smaller scale (local patterns). Such a polarity within psychomorphospace, the global versus the focal, now has a metric by which patterns of morphology can be modeled in both biological and psychological studies.

Predicting Firm Success From the Facial Appearance of Chief Executive Officers of Non-Profit Organizations

Recent research has demonstrated that judgments of Chief Executive Officers' (CEOs') faces predict their firms' financial performance, finding that characteristics associated with higher power (e.g., dominance) predict greater profits. Most of these studies have focused on CEOs of profit-based businesses, where the main criterion for success is financial gain. Here, we examined whether facial appearance might predict measures of success in a sample of CEOs of non-profit organizations (NPOs). Indeed, contrary to findings for the CEOs of profit-based businesses, judgments of leadership and power from the faces of CEOs of NPOs negatively correlated with multiple measures of charitable success (Study 1). Moreover, CEOs of NPOs looked less powerful than the CEOs of profit-based businesses (Study 2) and leadership ratings positively associated with warmth-based traits and NPO success when participants knew the faces belonged to CEOs of NPOs (Study 3). CEOs who look less dominant may therefore achieve greater success in leading NPOs, opposite the relationship found for the CEOs of profit-based companies. Thus, the relationship between facial appearance and leadership success varies by organizational context.