Reading the Face of a Leader: Women with Low Facial Masculinity Are Perceived as Competitive

Abstract

In competitive settings, people prefer leaders with masculine faces. But is facial masculinity a trait that is similarly desired in men and women leaders? Across three studies, we discovered that people indeed prefer men and women leaders who have faces with masculine traits. But surprisingly, we find that people also prefer women with low facial masculinity as leaders in competitive contexts (Study 1). Our findings indicate that low facial masculinity in women, but not in men is perceived to indicate competitiveness (Study 2). Thus, in contrast to men, women leaders who rate high in facial masculinity as well as those low in facial masculinity are both selected as leaders in competitive contexts. Indeed, among CEOs of S&P 500 companies, we find a greater range of facial masculinity among women CEOs than among men CEOs (Study 3). Our results suggest that traits of facial masculinity in men and women are interpreted differently. Low facial masculinity in women is linked to competitiveness and not only to cooperativeness as suggested by prior research. Editor's CommentThe paper by Silberzahn and Menges provides important insights into the effects of masculine and feminine facial features. Do leaders in competitive situations profit from masculine or feminine features, and does this vary across men and women? Based on their intuition and a few available data points, the authors expected mainstream ideas to hold for men but not for women, where those ideas support masculinity for leaders embedded in strongly competitive situations. The authors were right-among men, those with masculine features were favored as leaders and indeed were seen as more competitive, but among women those with strongly masculine features and those with strongly feminine features were favored and were rated as more competitive. Having shared these findings with several executive audiences, this editor can tell you that practicing managers are quite intrigued by the implications. For scholarship, the findings reported in the paper have implications for several research streams and theories.C. Chet Miller, Action Editor 272

The deficit bias: Candidate gender differences in the relative importance of facial stereotypic qualities to leadership hiring

“…For example, as attractiveness activates stereotyped expectations on which the target is evaluated (e.g., Heilman, 1983 ), future research could investigate interactive effects with attractiveness, testing whether it influences the hirability of men and women whose faces are rated as high/low in morality and sociability versus high/low in dominance. Another possible moderator could be facial masculinity‐femininity, which has been used to investigate the interplay between gender categorization, gender stereotypes and facial first impressions (e.g., Sutherland et al., 2015 ), and found to affect leaders’ evaluations (e.g., Silberzahn & Menges, 2016 ; Von Stockhausen, Koeser, & Sczesny, 2013 ). Thus, future research could test whether the deficit bias holds when examining men and women with high versus low levels of facial masculinity–femininity.…”