Michael P. Haselhuhn

A Face Only an Investor Could Love CEOs’ Facial Structure Predicts Their Firms’ Financial Performance

Researchers have theorized that innate personal traits are related to leadership success. Although links between psychological characteristics and leadership success have been well established, research has yet to identify any objective physical traits of leaders that predict organizational performance. In the research reported here, we identified leaders’ facial structure as a specific physical trait that correlates with organizational performance. Specifically, we found that firms whose male CEOs have wider faces (relative to facial height) achieve superior financial performance. Decision-making dynamics within a firm’s leadership team moderate this effect, such that the relationship between a given CEO’s facial measurements and his firm’s financial performance is stronger in firms with cognitively simple leadership teams.

How Implicit Beliefs Influence Trust Recovery

After a trust violation, some people are quick to forgive, whereas others never trust again. In this report, we identify a key characteristic that moderates trust recovery: implicit beliefs of moral character. Individuals who believe that moral character can change over time (incremental beliefs) are more likely to trust their counterpart following an apology and trustworthy behavior than are individuals who believe that moral character cannot change (entity beliefs). We demonstrate that a simple but powerful message can induce either entity or incremental beliefs about moral character.

Men’s Facial Width-to-Height Ratio Predicts Aggression: A Meta-Analysis

Recent research has identified men’s facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) as a reliable predictor of aggressive tendencies and behavior. Other research, however, has failed to replicate the fWHR-aggression relationship and has questioned whether previous findings are robust. In the current paper, we synthesize existing work by conducting a meta-analysis to estimate whether and how fWHR predicts aggression. Our results indicate a small, but significant, positive relationship between men’s fWHR and aggression.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies as a Link between Men’s Facial Width-to-Height Ratio and Behavior

The facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) has been identified as a reliable predictor of men’s behavior, with researchers focusing on evolutionary selection pressures as the underlying mechanism explaining these relationships. In this paper, we complement this approach and examine the extent to which social processes also determine the extent to which men’s fWHR serves as a behavioral cue. Specifically, we propose that observers’ treatment of target men based on the targets’ fWHR subsequently affects behavior, leading the targets to behave in ways that are consistent with the observers’ expectations (i.e., a self-fulfilling prophecy). Results from four studies demonstrate that individuals behave more selfishly when interacting with men with greater fWHRs, and this selfish behavior, in turn, elicits selfish behavior in others.

The Impact of Personal Experience on Behavior: Evidence from Video-Rental Fines

Personal experience matters. In a field setting with longitudinal data, we disentangle the effects of learning new information from the effects of personal experience. We demonstrate that experience with a fine, controlling for the effect of learning new information, significantly boosts future compliance. We also show that experience with a large fine boosts compliance more than experience with a small fine, but that the influence of experience with both large and small fines decays sharply over time. This paper was accepted by Brad Barber, Teck Ho, and Terrance Odean, special issue editors.