What determines a company's performance? The shape of the CEO's face
August 25, 2011 in Psychology & PsychiatryBelieve it or not, one thing that predicts how well a CEO's company performs is the width of his face. CEOs with wider faces, like Herb Kelleher, the former CEO of Southwest Airlines, have better-performing companies than CEOs like Dick Fuld, the long-faced final CEO of Lehman Brothers. That's the conclusion of a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Elaine M. Wong at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her colleagues study how top management teams work. But they have to do it in indirect ways. "CEOs and top executives don't typically have time to talk with researchers or take batteries of tests," she says. "Our research has primarily been at a distance." They've analyzed the content of letters to shareholders and looked at things like how a CEO's educational or personal background affects how well his or her company does. Wong and her colleagues, Margaret E. Ormiston of London Business School and Michael P. Haselhuhn of UWM, wanted to look at another aspect of CEOs their faces.
Looking at faces isn't as crazy as it might sound. Several studies have shown that the ratio of face width to face height is correlated with aggression. Hockey players with wider faces spend more time in the penalty box for fighting. Men with higher facial width are seen as less trustworthy and they feel more powerful.
"Most of these are seen as negative things, but power can have some positive effects," Wong says. People who feel powerful tend to look at the big picture rather than focusing on small details and are also better at staying on task. She and her colleagues thought that feeling of power might also be correlated with a company's financial performance.
Wong and her colleagues based their analyses on photos of 55 male CEOs of publicly-traded Fortune 500 organizations. They only used men because this relationship between face shape and behavior has only been found to apply to men; it's thought to have something to do with testosterone levels. They also gathered information on the companies' financial performance and analyzed shareholder letters to get a sense of the kind of thinking that goes on at those companies.
CEOs with a wider face, relative to the face's height, had much better firm financial performance than CEOs who had narrower faces. "In our sample, the CEOs with the higher facial ratios actually achieved significantly greater firm financial performance than CEOs with the lower facial ratios," Wong says.
Don't run out and invest in wide-faced CEOs' companies, though. Wong and her colleagues also found that the way the top management team thinks, as reflected in their writings, can get in the way of this effect. Teams that take a simplistic view of the world, in which everything is black and white, are thought to be more deferential to authority; in these companies, the CEO's face shape is more important. It's less important in companies where the top managers see the world more in shades of gray.
Provided by
Association for Psychological Science
-
Lasting impression: Does the face of a CEO determine a successful company?
Jan 10, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Megalomaniac CEOs: Good or bad for company performance?
Jan 26, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
New study measures narcissistic CEOs' effect on corporate strategy, performance
Jul 18, 2007 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Workers Get Paid More When They Work For Powerful CEOs
May 19, 2006 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Study: Companies better off hiring CEO from within in the long term
Jan 20, 2010 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Of mice and mental models: Neuroscientific implications of risk-optimized behavior in the mouse
11 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
-
Limits to growth: Scientists identify key metastasis-enabling enzyme
May 22, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
0
-
Seeing is as seeing does: Spatially-structured retinal input in early development of cortical maps
Apr 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (4) |
1
-
Dreamless nights: Brain activity during nonrapid eye movement sleep
Apr 09, 2012 |
4.4 / 5 (12) |
0
-
Take your time: Neurobiology sheds light on the superiority of spaced vs. massed learning
Mar 28, 2012 |
4.5 / 5 (21) |
3
-
A question about drug tolerance
May 23, 2012
-
Poor nutrition leading to overeating?
May 23, 2012
-
Math and dyslexia?
May 21, 2012
-
portable metabolism meter?
May 21, 2012
-
Rare medical conditions on 20/20 tonight
May 18, 2012
-
"Good" Cholesterol in Doubt
May 17, 2012
- More from Physics Forums - Medical Sciences
More news stories
More mental health care urged for kids who self-harm
(HealthDay) -- Doctors have long known that some kids suffering severe emotional turmoil find relief in physical pain -- cutting or burning or sticking themselves with pins to achieve a form of release.
Psychology & Psychiatry
8 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Questionable research practices surprisingly common
(Medical Xpress) -- Not all scientific misconduct is flat-out fraud. Much falls into the murkier realm of questionable research practices. A new study finds that in one field, psychology, these practices are surprisingly ...
Psychology & Psychiatry
11 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
|
Feeling strong emotions makes peoples' brains 'tick together'
Experiencing strong emotions synchronises brain activity across individuals, research team at Aalto University and Turku PET Centre in Finland has revealed.
Psychology & Psychiatry
May 24, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
Formal recognition of PMDD will lift stigma for women
A decision to recognise premenstrual dysphoric disorder as a genuine psychiatric condition will finally provide validation for this awful and poorly understood syndrome and alleviate the stigma ...
Psychology & Psychiatry
May 24, 2012 |
2 / 5 (1) |
1
Long-term meditation leads to different brain organization
(Medical Xpress) -- People who practice mindfulness meditation learn to accept their feelings, emotions, and states of mind without judging or resisting them. They simply live in the moment.
Psychology & Psychiatry
May 24, 2012 |
5 / 5 (5) |
0
|
Tongue analysis software uses ancient Chinese medicine to warn of disease
For 5,000 years, the Chinese have used a system of medicine based on the flow and balance of positive and negative energies in the body. In this system, the appearance of the tongue is one of the measures used to classify ...
Of mice and mental models: Neuroscientific implications of risk-optimized behavior in the mouse
(Medical Xpress) -- Regardless of an organism’s biological complexity, every encephalized animal continuously makes under-informed behavioral choices that can have serious consequences. Despite its ubiquity, ...
Cancer may require simpler genetic mutations than previously thought
Chromosomal deletions in DNA often involve just one of two gene copies inherited from either parent. But scientists haven't known how a deletion in one gene from one parent, called a "hemizygous" deletion, can contribute ...
Skp2 activates cancer-promoting, glucose-processing Akt
HER2 and its epidermal growth factor receptor cousins mobilize a specialized protein to activate a major player in cancer development and sugar metabolism, scientists report in the May 25 issue of Cell.
Early physical therapist treatment associated with reduced risk of healthcare utilization and reduced overall healthcare
A new study published in Spine shows that early treatment by a physical therapist for low back pain (LBP), as compared to delayed treatment, was associated with reduced risk of subsequent healthcare utilization and lower ...
Inherited DNA change explains overactive leukemia gene
A small inherited change in DNA is largely responsible for overactivating a gene linked to poor treatment response in people with acute leukemia.
Aug 25, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
Aug 25, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
Aug 25, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
Should've seen that coming
Aug 25, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
Aug 25, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
Interesting concept, fun to read about, but 55 CEO's out of thousands, and all the confounding factors hardly makes for solid science.
Correlation is Not Causation
And who is paying the bill? Wonder if this was another study courtesy of the NIH via the American tax payer, and nice little loans from China?
Aug 26, 2011
Rank: not rated yet
Aug 26, 2011
Rank: not rated yet
Aug 26, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
Yes. Being ranked at number 35 in the fortune 500 makes Apple a not-so-succesfull cmopany.
This bears repeating. That a correlates with B does not mean that striving for B will get you a better chance at A.
Aug 26, 2011
Rank: not rated yet
Aug 26, 2011
Rank: not rated yet
Aug 26, 2011
Rank: not rated yet
Correlation is NOT Causation. In spite of how tempting it is to find 'hints.'
Aug 26, 2011
Rank: not rated yet
Too soon
Aug 27, 2011
Rank: not rated yet
Hey, Dick, why the long face?
Aug 27, 2011
Rank: not rated yet