FACIAL DOMINANCE,

POWER & LEADERSHIP

Allen Grabo - EASP 2017

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND -WHAT IS DOMINANCE?

Traditionally inferred from an animals’ overt behavior

• Sequences of dominance interactions allow observers to map the dominance structure of a group

May include:

• Physical attacks

• Threats and signals of submission

• Displacement at a feeding site

Typically such interactions have a clear ‘winner’ and ‘loser’

EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY

Clawed lobsters: Cretaceous (~140 million years

ago).

Conor McGregor: Born 14 July, 1988Serotonin:

? Predates the development of neurotransmission

“WINNER AND LOSER” MODELS

The problem with only observing wins and losses is that:

• Winner effects alone lead to a strict linear hierarchy

• Loser effects alone lead to a despotic outcome

Without information about opponent, ESS depends on costs of persisting - until lowest RHP loses.

Ouch.

CONTEXT, CUES AND HEURISTICS

Cumulative Assessment Model (Payne, 1998):

• Costs are also imposed by the actions of their opponents, decision to persist or flee depends on sum of others’ actions

• Over time individuals learn to avoid engaging, or to escalate

In other words…heuristics:

• Paying attention to fitness-relevant information about others

• Influenced by contextual factors and physical cues

ELT: Leadership and followership depend on such heuristics

HEURISTICS IN THE VOTING BOOTH

“The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal — that you can gather votes like

box tops — is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.” ~Adlai Stevenson

EVOLUTION & LEADERSHIP

How did leadership and followership evolve?

•Began with pairs of foraging hunter-gatherers (in EEA)

•Lead to dominance hierarchies (with agriculture?)

•Checked by development of egalitarian norms

(“civilization”)

•Resulted in the kinds of formalized leadership we see

today

EVOLUTION & LEADERSHIP

Why is it adaptive?

• Provides access to greater resources

• Allows for migration to new environments

• Maintains a stable social environment

• Regulates intergroup relations

FACIAL CUES AND LEADERSHIP(VAN VUGT & GRABO, 2016)

Leader Attribute Facial Cues Adaptive Domains Follower Heuristic Example

Dominance

Masculinity

Conflict, WarFollow dominant

individual,

Military

Height to Width

RatioCEO

Trustworthiness

FemininityCooperation,

Peace

Follow prosocial

individual

Politician

Ethnicity NGO

Competence Symmetry / FA KnowledgeFollow informed

individualEntrepreneur

Attractiveness,

Health

Skin Coloration Disease /

Pathogen

Avoidance

Follow attractive /

healthy individual

Explorer

THE “LEADER INDEX”

Signals

Leader

Index

Reputation /

Prestige

Coordination

challenge

Followership

InvestmentLeadership Potential Successful

Coordination

Cues

Inferential

Attributional

Internal Regulatory Variable

Contextual Triggers

Search

ing

FACIAL DOMINANCE AS A CUE

• One of the best predictors is facial masculinity (Todorov et al., 2015; Re & Rule, 2017).

• More masculine faces (squared face, strong jaw lines, pronounced eye brows, thin eyes and lips) are judged as more dominant.

• Dominant-looking individuals are more likely to be judged as leaders (Spisak et al, 2012).

• Physical strength (Blaker & Van Vugt, 2014) would have been a reliable indicator of one’s ability to resolve such conflicts (as it is in nonhuman primates).

SUPPORTING EVIDENCE

• Faces of soldiers rated more dominant than politicians and businessmen (Mazur et al., 1984)

• Cadets with a more dominant-looking face climb attain a higher future rank (Mueller & Mazur, 1996)

• Masculine faces favored when people were asked to vote for a war-time leader (Little et al., 2007)

• Replicated using both morphed faces (Spisak, Homan et al., 2012) and real faces in Western and non-Western samples (Spisak, Dekker et al., 2012).

2016 REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES

MANIPULATING DOMINANCETORODOV ET AL, 2010

Untrustworthy

Trustworthy

COMBINING WITH WEBMORPH(DEBRUINE & TIDDEMAN, 2017)

RESULTS IN REALISTIC STIMULI

EXAMPLE DOMINANCE TRANSFORM

LETS APPLY IT TO POLITICIANS

I GOT A LITTLE TOO INTO IT

A CHALLENGE

TESTING IN THE “REAL WORLD”

Theoretical Background: Previous research has found that more masculine-looking leaders are preferred in contexts of intergroup competition, while feminine-looking leaders are preferred for intragroup cooperation. However, there are still several questions regarding the generalizability of these results which we believe could provide further support for this theory:

• Selection of leader candidates

• External Validity

• Hypothetical Scenarios

• Followership Investment

HYPOTHESIS

We sought to address these issues by testing whether participants would prefer masculinized or feminized versions of the actual candidates in the 2016 US Presidential Elections.

H1: Consistent with the Evolutionary Contingency Hypothesis, we predicted that followers who perceive a match between the context (war or peace) and a leader candidate’s physical cues (masculinized or feminizedfaces) will rate them more positively on both personality attributes and leadership ability.

DESIGN

Participants. 298 Americans (183 males, 115 females; Mage=33.98)

Scenarios. Randomly assigned to either the war or peacecondition.

Faces. Shown masculinized or feminized photos of the candidates currently running for President

Ratings. Underneath each face participants were asked to indicate, on a 7-point Likert-type scale, how strongly they would agree with the following descriptions of the person's personality:

Trustworthy, Warm, Competent, Attractive, Dominant, and Charismatic.

Finally, they were asked to assess their leadership potential.

RESULTS - PERSONALITY RATINGS

Attribute Condition N MDiff SE F P

TrustworthyPeace 140 -1.76 .88

War 158 1.43 .83 6.94 <.01

WarmPeace 140 -2.10 .87

War 158 1.42 .82 8.64 <.01

CompetentPeace 140 -1.90 .847

War 158 1.48 .797 8.45 <.01

DominantPeace 140 -1.54 .85

War 158 1.24 .80 5.60 .02

CharismaticPeace 140 -2.04 .86

War 158 1.40 .81 8.47 <.01

Leadership PotentialPeace 140 .77 1.08

War 158 3.36 1.01 3.083 .04

Figure 1 – Estimated marginal mean differences in personality attributions between war and peace conditions. Negative values indicate a preference for the feminized version, positive values indicate a preference for the masculinized version.

RESULTS - COMBINED

•Participants evaluated feminized faces more positively in the peace condition (M=-1.87, SD=9.54) but gave higher ratings to masculinized faces in the war condition (M=1.40, SD=10.30; F[1,298]=7.97, p<.01, η²=.03).

•We find the same interaction effect in ratings of leadership potential between feminized versions in the peace condition (M=.77, SD=12.94) and masculinized faces in the war condition (M=3.36, SD=12.53; F[1,298]=3.09, p=.04, η²=.01).

•However, the positive numbers for both results indicate that participants preferred the masculinized versions overall.

…AND THE WINNER IS

THE SADDEST CAKE

THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION.