What Matters When Choosing a Leader?

When choosing a leader, it appears that the most intelligent looking candidates are almost always trumped by those who look healthier. This revelation comes from a study conducted by researchers at VU University Amsterdam, where people’s preferences for certain traits in leaders were studied, along with how they look for this information in the physical appearance of candidates.

The research group, led by Brian Spisak, asked 148 individuals to imagine they were selecting a new CEO for a company and to select their preferred candidate from two images of male faces. In each choice, the participants were given a job description detailing the main challenges of the CEO. In each choice, the two photos were of the same man, whose face had been digitally transformed in order to make him appear more or less intelligent, or his complexion more or less healthy. Overall, a stronger preference for health than intelligence was found, with the subjects favouring the healthier faces in 69% of trials. More intelligent-looking faces were only preferred for the challenges requiring the most diplomacy and inventiveness.

Previous research has shown that these preferences are consistent across cultures; suggesting that the preferences are partially innate. Facial traits were chosen as a focus as they provide a wealth of information about individuals. For example, it has previously been demonstrated that cooperative personalities are statistically more likely to have a more ‘effeminate’ face.

Spisak believes that the research shows it always pays for aspiring leaders to look healthy. “If you want to be chosen for a leadership position, looking intelligent is an optional extra under context-specific situations whereas the appearance of health appears to be important in a more context-general way across a variety of situations.”