Face-ism and military leadership

Abstract

Deriving inferences from facial appearance is called face-ism. In particular, people make rapid and accurate inferences about the targets' character based on their appearance. Over the last 15 years, the effects of a leader's facial appearance have been vigorously studied in the domain of psychology and leadership research worldwide. Previous studies suggest that facial appearance significantly predicts leader selection, thus leading more competent, dominant, trustworthy, and attractive individuals to be selected as leaders. Further, they indicate that this relationship depends on the circumstances (i.e., wartime and time of peace). The current study reviewed recent research on face-ism and leadership, while discussing the factors of the face effects, the main method, findings, limitations, and future directions of the research. Finally, the authors discussed the implications of face-ism in the field of military leadership.