ArticlePloS one2012
Warriors and peacekeepers: testing a biosocial implicit leadership hypothesis of intergroup relations using masculine and feminine faces.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed.
- Facial cues to perceived height influence leadership choices in simulated war and peace contexts.Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior · 2013Trial
- Validation of facial attributions in leadership: Trustworthiness and age in Chinese mid-level management.PloS one · 2025Article
- Risk-taking influences perceived dominance, prestige, and leadership endorsement in Japanese adults.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Reputation concern influences perceived leadership.BMC research notes · 2024Article
- Preference for leaders with high and low facial width-to-height ratios: moderating roles of political ideology and voting context.Current issues in personality psychology · 2023Article
- Dictators Differ From Democratically Elected Leaders in Facial Warmth.Social psychological and personality science · 2021Article
- Pandemic Leadership: Sex Differences and Their Evolutionary-Developmental Origins.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- Why East Asians but not South Asians are underrepresented in leadership positions in the United States.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- The Male Warrior Hypothesis: Testosterone-related Cooperation and Aggression in the Context of Intergroup Conflict.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- An Experimental Examination of Demand-Side Preferences for Female and Male National Leaders.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Evolutionary Models of Leadership : Tests and Synthesis.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2019Article
- Social Transmission of Leadership Preference: Knowledge of Group Membership and Partisan Media Reporting Moderates Perceptions of Leadership Ability From Facial Cues to Competence and Dominance.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Context-specific effects of facial dominance and trustworthiness on hypothetical leadership decisions.PloS one · 2019Article
- Trash-Talking and Trolling.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2018Article
- The implicit power motive predicts decisions in line with perceived instrumentality.Motivation and emotion · 2018Article
- Facial width-to-height ratio differs by social rank across organizations, countries, and value systems.PloS one · 2017Article
- Social Cognitive Training Improves Emotional Processing and Reduces Aggressive Attitudes in Ex-combatants.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
- Vote Choice, Ideology, and Social Dominance Orientation Influence Preferences for Lower Pitched Voices in Political Candidates.Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior · 2015Article
- The Evolution of Empathy and Women's Precarious Leadership Appointments.Frontiers in psychology · 2015Article
- Perceptions of Competence, Strength, and Age Influence Voters to Select Leaders with Lower-Pitched Voices.PloS one · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This paper examines the impact of facial cues on leadership emergence. Using evolutionary social psychology, we expand upon implicit and contingent theories of leadership and propose that different types of intergroup relations elicit different implicit cognitive leadership prototypes. It is argued that a biologically based hormonal connection between behavior and corresponding facial characteristics interacts with evolutionarily consistent social dynamics to influence leadership emergence. We predict that masculine-looking leaders are selected during intergroup conflict (war) and feminine-looking leaders during intergroup cooperation (peace). Across two experiments we show that a general categorization of leader versus nonleader is an initial implicit requirement for emergence, and at a context-specific level facial cues of masculinity and femininity contingently affect war versus peace leadership emergence in the predicted direction. In addition, we replicate our findings in Experiment 1 across culture using Western and East Asian samples. In Experiment 2, we also show that masculine-feminine facial cues are better predictors of leadership than male-female cues. Collectively, our results indicate a multi-level classification of context-specific leadership based on visual cues imbedded in the human face and challenge traditional distinctions of male and female leadership.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.