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Dig it: Companies run by CEOs with attractive faces tend to have higher profits, according to a pretty hilarious new study appearing in next month’s issue of Psychological Science. Psychologists Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady took a bunch of pictures of CEOs, put them into grayscale and standardized them in size, and then showed them to college students. The students were given no other information about the CEOs — they weren’t even told which companies they ran. With nothing other than the picture to go on, the students were asked to rate the CEOs according to their apparent “competence, dominance, likeability, facial maturity and trustworthiness.”
The upshot? CEOs who scored high on the Am-I-Hot-Or-Not ratings turned out to be piloting the most profitable companies. As a press release notes:
“These findings suggest that naive judgments may provide more accurate assessments of individuals than well-informed judgments can,” wrote the authors. “Our results are particularly striking given the uniformity of the CEOs’ appearances.” The majority of CEOs, who were selected according to their Fortune 1000 ranking, were Caucasian males of similar age.
We could, of course, regard this as a sterling example of “Science Confirms The Obvious.” I mean, in modern America, is this news? That attractive, confident-looking white dudes are where it’s at? And this comes on the heels of dozens of recent studies of hot-ology, which have demonstrated time and time again that tall, willowy, cocksure white folks are cleaning everyone else’s clocks. It also fits neatly into Malcolm Gladwell’s thesis in Blink — i.e. that first impressions are of enormous importance.
Nonetheless, we are, as the scientists note, left with the chicken-and-egg question: “which came first, the powerful-looking CEO or their successful career?”
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
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» visit the Collision Detection archives
September 26, 2008 » 01:57 PM
From an interview with ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis:
One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
September 25, 2008 » 11:21 AM
“Video from a camp north of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors characterized that as special driver training but the defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than “cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young Canadian motorists.” - A key piece of evidence submitted in the trial of a gang of alleged young Canadian terrorists.
September 24, 2008 » 11:21 PM
“Life imitates art imitating life: just thought a gnat crawling across my monitor was part of a Flash-based ad. I clicked it.” - A Tweet from Bill Braine.
September 24, 2008 » 02:37 PM
“Funniest FB friend request ever: “Twitter friend hoping to get to second base (Facebook!) ;-).”” - A recent Tweet by Pistachio
September 24, 2008 » 12:28 PM
Chinese powdered-milk crisis creates a new market: The return of the wet nurse
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