Context-specific effects of facial dominance and trustworthiness on hypothetical leadership decisions

Ferguson, H. S., Owen, A., Hahn, A. C., Torrance, J. , Debruine, L. M. and Jones, B. C. (2019) Context-specific effects of facial dominance and trustworthiness on hypothetical leadership decisions. PLoS ONE, 14(7), e0214261. (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0214261) (PMID:31356614)

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Abstract

Social judgments of faces predict important social outcomes, including leadership decisions. Previous work suggests that facial cues associated with perceptions of dominance and trustworthiness have context-specific effects on leadership decisions. Facial cues linked to perceived dominance have been found to be preferred in leaders for hypothetical wartime contexts and facial cues linked to perceived trustworthiness have been found to be preferred in leaders for hypothetical peacetime contexts. Here we sought to replicate these effects using images of women’s faces, as previous studies have primarily focused on perceptions of leadership abilities from male faces, with only a handful of these including female faces. Consistent with previous work, a linear mixed effects model demonstrated that more trustworthy-looking faces were preferred in leaders during times of peace and more dominant-looking faces were preferred in leaders during times of war. These results provide converging evidence for context-specific effects of facial cues on hypothetical leadership judgments.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Torrance, Dr Jaimie and DeBruine, Professor Lisa and Jones, Professor Benedict
Creator Roles:
Debruine, L.Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Validation, Writing – review and editing
Jones, B.Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing
Torrance, J.Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – review and editing
Authors: Ferguson, H. S., Owen, A., Hahn, A. C., Torrance, J., Debruine, L. M., and Jones, B. C.
College/School:College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Psychology & Neuroscience
Journal Name:PLoS ONE
Publisher:Public Library of Science
ISSN:1932-6203
ISSN (Online):1932-6203
Published Online:29 July 2019
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2019 Ferguson et al.
First Published:First published in PLoS ONE 14(7):e0214261
Publisher Policy:Reproduced under a Creative Commons license

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Project CodeAward NoProject NamePrincipal InvestigatorFunder's NameFunder RefLead Dept
672531KINSHIP: How do humans recognise kin?Lisa DebruineEuropean Research Council (ERC)647910RI NEUROSCIENCE & PSYCHOLOGY