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A new academic study finds that more profitable companies have more attractive CEOs.

Using photographs of the highest and lowest ranked Fortune 1000 companies’ CEOs, psychologists Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady quizzed ordinary college students to determine which of the pictured faces were characteristic of a leader.

Without knowledge of the pictured individuals’ job titles, and by rating the faces on competence, dominance, likeability, facial maturity and trustworthiness, the students were able to distinguish between the successful and the not-so-successful CEOs.

Despite the ambiguity of the images, which were cropped to the face, put into grayscale and standardized in size, ratings of power- and leadership-related traits from CEOs’ faces were significantly related to company profits.

"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.

Could be, but color me skeptical.

(Via Joe Weisenthal)

Posted by edelfenbein at January 15, 2008 10:50 AM