Inferences of Competence from Snap Judgments of Faces Predict Election Outcomes
princeton.edu
princeton.edu
What if people make accurate snap judgments of competence?
Not necessarily perfect, but better than 50% (e.g. 68.6% and 72.4% in TA).
To test this with politicians, we'd need to test the judgment against an objective measure of competence. This could be made after they completed their term of government, and taking into account only their actions and responses, and not circumstances beyond their control.
But I wonder if is there an objective measure of a statesman's competence...
This would be pretty interesting if it were true at any major level of significance. I doubt it could be as high as 68% though.
More significantly, what someone looks like should probably be outclassed by other factors. There's no real measure of competence except competence. Looks are just noise. But that's not how voters tend, apparently.
Recall the Warren Harding effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Harding
He wasn't much of a politician, or an orator. William MacAdoo describe his campaign speeches as "an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea." But he sure looked like a distinguished statesman.
Yet he was a bum. One of the worst presidents ever, though immensely popular in office.
I think our knee-jerk reaction these days is to assume that looks don't matter categorically, and that any time we observe humans judging others based on looks some primitive bias is at work.
Two things come to mind that might challenge that assumption:
1. If outward appearance were such a poor determiner of attributes like competence, humankind's use of appearance to formulate snap judgments about others would be an exceptionally poor survival strategy from an evolutionary perspective.
2. The fact that we are duped from time to time by the Warran Harding's of the world could in fact be the exception that proves the rule. That is, because the rule proves true so frequently in our experience, it leaves an opening for the occasional impostor who looks the part to take advantage of our otherwise frequently accurate intuitive judgements.
Like the commenter above you said, I'd be interested in seeing someone test these theories more thoroughly, perhaps against a profession where competence can be more objectively measured.
One factor that is counter to your point 1: it could be that in our evolutionary past, there was greater variation in physical appearance than today that did affect competence, such as disease, malnutrition and accident, and so judgments based on appearance had greater predictive power then than they do today - but we still retain it as a basis of judgment.
A scary thought is that judgments of "competence" might really be judgments of "power" - i.e. it's judging whether you'd better go along with them; not their competence. In fairy tales, the princes and princesses are good looking, because they are well-nourished, looked after and trained - which is because they are supported by a power structure (the king/queen). Regardless of their "competence", you'd better defer to them. Keen awareness of the local power structure is strong in gregarious animals like us.
I'm suggesting that health and confidence are indicators of power to our evolutionarily-trained instincts.
Here's what Malcom Gladwell had to say:
I polled about half of the companies on the Fortune 500 list--the largest corporations in the United States--asking each company questions about its CEO. The heads of big companies are, as I'm sure comes as no surprise to anyone, overwhelmingly white men, which undoubtedly reflects some kind of implicit bias. But they are also virtually all tall: In my sample, I found that on average CEOs were just a shade under six feet. Given that the average American male is 5'9" that means that CEOs, as a group, have about three inches on the rest of their sex. But this statistic actually understates matters. In the U.S. population, about 14.5 percent of all men are six feet or over. Among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, that number is 58 percent. Even more strikingly, in the general American population, 3.9 percent of adult men are 6'2" or taller. Among my CEO sample, 30 percent were 6'2" or taller.
Whatever the reasoning, Americans seem to want to be lead by taller people.
Maybe there is some actual correlation between competence and looks. That wouldn't be terribly startling (though maybe it's due large to the fact that competent looking people are given more opportunities).
But what would be startling is for it to have such an overwhelming effect. That, I'm almost sure, is a fluke.
I was asking for an arena with an objective measure of "actual competence" (not opinion, and not affected by circumstance). One example is how straight a line someone can draw. The performance of politicians and CEOs is notoriously affected by circumstance.
A possible experiment design: rank people by to how "competent they look" (using the article's method); then rank their "actual competence", by the objective measurement of how straight a line they can draw. What is the correlation between "competent looking" and "actual competence"?
Another area in where competence can be objectively measured grammatic correctness (written or spoken). Or, standard tests: IQ tests, university tests/entrance exams. Very convenient for a psych dept, so I bet it's been done to death.
What would that have to do with CEO's tending to be taller than average?
Maybe there is some actual correlation between competence and looks.
It has been established for many decades that looks are correlated with g. Here is an abbreviated list of positive-correlations of g that were established by 1987:
http://www.childrenofmillennium.org/eugenics/articles
Eye color, lightness of
Hair color, lightness of
Handgrip strength
Height
Health, fitness, longevity
Income
Leadership
Metabolism (high)
Myopia
Sports participation at university
Symmetry of facial features
Talking speed
Vital (lung) capacity
Inversely correlated with g are:
Aging (biological senescence)
Smoking
Weight/height ratio
Isn't beauty (for want of a better word) associated with symmetry? And isn't that associated with healthy development of body and mind? And isn't that a positive factor for competence? I think people react against "looking good" because we have a tendency to over-value it; but dismissing it entirely (as an indicator) is simply the opposite error.
On the other hand, being naturally gifted (and relying on it), instead of working hard, can undermine one's success: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-sm...
In Harding's case (thanks for link; I'm not from the US), much judgment seems to dwell on his oratorical skill, not on his "actual competence" as a statesman. If voters liked his speeches, and that was their purpose, then his oration showed competence with respect to its goal. Disclaimer: I really know nothing about him.
I guess a simple solution to my original question is to select a field where competence can be measured objectively (not politics!), where the actual correlation between "looking competent" and "actual competence" can be ascertained empirically. I'm sure this has been done already...