The Facial Appearance of CEOs: Faces Signal Selection but Not Performance

Research overwhelmingly shows that facial appearance predicts leader selection. However, the evidence on the relevance of faces for actual leader ability and consequently performance is inconclusive. By using a state-of-the-art, objective measure for face recognition, we test the predictive value of CEOs’ faces for firm performance in a large sample of faces. We first compare the faces of Fortune500 CEOs with those of US citizens and professors. We find clear confirmation that CEOs do look different when compared to citizens or professors, replicating the finding that faces matter for selection. More importantly, we also find that faces of CEOs of top performing firms do not differ from other CEOs. Based on our advanced face recognition method, our results suggest that facial appearance matters for leader selection but that it does not do so for leader performance.

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title: Facial appearance and leadership: An overview and challenges for new research
abstract: There is plenty of evidence showing that facial features predict success in politics, business and the military. Some of the papers providing this evidence are related to selection into leadership positions, others into how facial features predict performance in such a position. The purpose of this introduction is to provide an overview of The Leadership Quarterly special issue on Facial Appearance and Leadership , as well as to discuss the use of good looks as a heuristic, and difficulties related to establishing causal relationships in this area of research.

title: Social attributions from faces: determinants, consequences, accuracy, and functional significance.
abstract: Since the early twentieth century, psychologists have known that there is consensus in attributing social and personality characteristics from facial appearance. Recent studies have shown that surprisingly little time and effort are needed to arrive at this consensus. Here we review recent research on social attributions from faces. Section I outlines data-driven methods capable of identifying the perceptual basis of consensus in social attributions from faces (e.g., What makes a face look threatening?). Section II describes nonperceptual determinants of social attributions (e.g., person knowledge and incidental associations). Section III discusses evidence that attributions from faces predict important social outcomes in diverse domains (e.g., investment decisions and leader selection). In Section IV, we argue that the diagnostic validity of these attributions has been greatly overstated in the literature. In the final section, we offer an account of the functional significance of these attributions.

title: The Face of Success
abstract: First impressions are powerful and rich sources of information about other people, and studies have demonstrated that they predict performance in numerous domains, such as teaching (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1993) and electoral success (Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005). Much of this work, however, has employed outcome variables that are subjective. For example, in the study of teacher effectiveness, both the predictor (naive observers’ ratings) and the outcome (teaching evaluations) were based on subjective opinions. Similarly, electoral success is based on voters’ impressions of candidates, which are also responsible for which candidates are elected. In the current study, we examined the relation between a subjective predictor and an objective performance outcome: Are impressions of chief executive officers (CEOs) related to the performance of their companies? Despite the ubiquitous perception of the CEO as the embodiment of a company, there is no clear evidence of any relation betweenCEOs’ personalities and their companies’success (Ranft, Zinko, Ferris, & Buckley, 2006). Although some studies show that mediating factors, such as environmental context, can link factors like CEOs’ charisma to companies’ performance, no direct relation between CEOs’ personalities and companies’ success has been found (Agle, Nagarajan, Sonnenfeld, & Srinivasan, 2006; Tosi, Misangyi, Fanelli, Waldman, & Yammarino, 2004). Previous research, however, has shown that personality traits associated with the evaluation of leadership overlap with traits that can be judged reliably from the face. These traits include competence, likeability, and trustworthiness (Todorov et al., 2005) and dominance (Hess, Adams, & Kleck, 2005). Another facial feature related to judgments of leadership is facial maturity (Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2005). Are these variables that can be gauged from facial information also associated with leaders’ success and performance? To answer this question, we asked participants to make naive personality judgments from the photographs of the CEOs from the 25 highest and 25 lowest ranked companies of the Fortune1,000 and examinedwhether these judgments related to measures of the companies’ financial success.

title: The influence of economic context on the relationship between chief executive officer facial appearance and company profits
abstract: Inferences of leadership ability and personality from faces have been associated with leaders' efficacy across multiple domains. One influential factor that has only been scarcely explored, however, is the context in which leadership occurs. The present studies examined the effect of two such contextual variables: economic conditions across time and economic conditions across nations. In Study 1, inferences of leadership ability from the faces of American Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) predicted their companies' financial performance prior to the Financial Crisis of 2008 but not after. In Study 2, traits previously found to predict the success of American CEOs before the Financial Crisis (i.e., Power) predicted the success of CEOs in Germany in the year following the crisis but not in the US, consistent with the differential impact of the international recession in the two nations. These results suggest that economic events may affect the relationship between facial appearance and business leaders' success.

title: A Face Only an Investor Could Love
abstract: 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.

title: A Corporate Beauty Contest
abstract: We conduct beauty contest experiments, using close to 2,000 subjects to study the facial traits of CEOs. In one experiment we use pairs of photographs and find that subjects rate CEO faces as appearing more "competent" and less "likable" than non-CEO faces. Another experiment matches CEOs from large firms against CEOs from smaller firms and finds large-firm CEOs look more competent and likable. In a third experiment, subjects numerically rate the facial traits of CEOs. We find that executive compensation is linked to these perceived "competence" ratings. Our analysis explores these findings in more detail and shows that the facial-trait rating can be explained by a quantitative scoring of the "maturity" or "baby-facedness" of the CEO. That is, more mature looking CEOs are assigned higher "competence" scores. This finding is potentially worrisome because psychology research shows that baby-faced-looking people often possess qualities opposite to those projected by their facial traits. Accordingly, we find no evidence that the firms of competent looking CEOs perform better. Essentially, the "look" of competence says very little about effective competence.

title: Social attributions from faces bias human choices
abstract: Our success and well-being, as individuals and societies, depend on our ability to make wise social decisions about important interpersonal matters, such as the leaders we select and the individuals we choose to trust. Nevertheless, our impressions of people are shaped by their facial appearances and, consequently, so too are these social decisions. This article summarizes research linking facial morphological traits to important social outcomes and discusses various factors that moderate this relationship.

title: The General Age of Leadership: Older-Looking Presidential Candidates Win Elections during War
abstract: As nation-state leaders age they increasingly engage in inter-state militarized disputes yet in industrialized societies a steady decrease in testosterone associated with aging is observed – which suggests a decrease in dominance behavior. The current paper points out that from modern societies to Old World monkeys increasing both in age and social status encourages dominant strategies to maintain acquired rank. Moreover, it is argued this consistency has shaped an implicit prototype causing followers to associate older age with dominance leadership. It is shown that (i) faces of older leaders are preferred during intergroup conflict and (ii) morphing U.S. Presidential candidates to appear older or younger has an overriding effect on actual election outcomes. This indicates that democratic voting can be systematically adjusted by activating innate biases. These findings appear to create a new line of research regarding the biology of leadership and contextual cues of age.

title: The functional basis of face evaluation
abstract: People automatically evaluate faces on multiple trait dimensions, and these evaluations predict important social outcomes, ranging from electoral success to sentencing decisions. Based on behavioral studies and computer modeling, we develop a 2D model of face evaluation. First, using a principal components analysis of trait judgments of emotionally neutral faces, we identify two orthogonal dimensions, valence and dominance, that are sufficient to describe face evaluation and show that these dimensions can be approximated by judgments of trustworthiness and dominance. Second, using a data-driven statistical model for face representation, we build and validate models for representing face trustworthiness and face dominance. Third, using these models, we show that, whereas valence evaluation is more sensitive to features resembling expressions signaling whether the person should be avoided or approached, dominance evaluation is more sensitive to features signaling physical strength/weakness. Fourth, we show that important social judgments, such as threat, can be reproduced as a function of the two orthogonal dimensions of valence and dominance. The findings suggest that face evaluation involves an overgeneralization of adaptive mechanisms for inferring harmful intentions and the ability to cause harm and can account for rapid, yet not necessarily accurate, judgments from faces.

title: The big man has a big mouth: Mouth width correlates with perceived leadership ability and actual leadership performance
abstract: Previous studies have found that facial appearance can predict both the selection and performance of leaders. Little is known about the specific facial features responsible for this relationship, however. One possible feature is mouth width, which correlates with the propensity for physical combat in primates and could therefore be linked to one's perceived dominance and achievement of greater social rank. Here, we found that mouth width correlated with leader selection in experimentally standardized (Study 1A) and experimentally manipulated (Study 1B) faces. Applying these findings to real leaders, we observed that mouth width correlated with judgments of CEOs' leadership ability and with a measure of their actual leadership success (i.e., the profitability of their companies; Study 2). Individuals with wider mouths were also more likely to have won U.S. senate, but not gubernatorial, races (Study 3). Mouth width may therefore be a valid cue to leadership selection and success.

title: Identification of human faces
abstract: How well can human faces be identified by humans and by computers, using subjectively judged "feature" descriptions like long ears, wide-set eyes, etc.? Three classes of experiments are reported: 1) Gathering, analysis, and assessment of face-feature data for 255 faces. 2) Computer identification-studies. 3) Human identification-studies. A set of 22 features was evolved from an initially larger set to provide relevant, distinctive, relatively independent measures which can be judged reliably. Computer studies and a mathematical model established limits of performance of a person attempting to isolate a face from a population using feature descriptions. The model predicts that under certain conditions approximately 6 of an individual's features are required to isolate him from a population of 255. Human experiments under similar conditions showed unique identification occurred with an average of about 7 features. The model predicts that for a population of 4×106, only 14 feature-descriptions are required. These studies form a foundation for continuing research on real-time man-machine interaction for computer classification and identification of multidimensional vectors specified by noisy components.

title: Eigenfaces for Recognition
abstract: We have developed a near-real-time computer system that can locate and track a subject's head, and then recognize the person by comparing characteristics of the face to those of known individuals. The computational approach taken in this system is motivated by both physiology and information theory, as well as by the practical requirements of near-real-time performance and accuracy. Our approach treats the face recognition problem as an intrinsically two-dimensional (2-D) recognition problem rather than requiring recovery of three-dimensional geometry, taking advantage of the fact that faces are normally upright and thus may be described by a small set of 2-D characteristic views. The system functions by projecting face images onto a feature space that spans the significant variations among known face images. The significant features are known as "eigenfaces," because they are the eigenvectors (principal components) of the set of faces; they do not necessarily correspond to features such as eyes, ears, and noses. The projection operation characterizes an individual face by a weighted sum of the eigenface features, and so to recognize a particular face it is necessary only to compare these weights to those of known individuals. Some particular advantages of our approach are that it provides for the ability to learn and later recognize new faces in an unsupervised manner, and that it is easy to implement using a neural network architecture.

title: Face recognition: A literature survey
abstract: As one of the most successful applications of image analysis and understanding, face recognition has recently received significant attention, especially during the past several years. At least two reasons account for this trend: the first is the wide range of commercial and law enforcement applications, and the second is the availability of feasible technologies after 30 years of research. Even though current machine recognition systems have reached a certain level of maturity, their success is limited by the conditions imposed by many real applications. For example, recognition of face images acquired in an outdoor environment with changes in illumination and/or pose remains a largely unsolved problem. In other words, current systems are still far away from the capability of the human perception system.This paper provides an up-to-date critical survey of still- and video-based face recognition research. There are two underlying motivations for us to write this survey paper: the first is to provide an up-to-date review of the existing literature, and the second is to offer some insights into the studies of machine recognition of faces. To provide a comprehensive survey, we not only categorize existing recognition techniques but also present detailed descriptions of representative methods within each category. In addition, relevant topics such as psychophysical studies, system evaluation, and issues of illumination and pose variation are covered.

title: Increased facial width-to-height ratio and perceived dominance in the faces of the UK's leading business leaders.
abstract: The relative proportion of the internal features of a face (the facial width-to-height ratio, FWH) has been shown to be related to individual differences in behaviour in males, specifically competitiveness and aggressiveness. In this study, we show that the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of the leading UK businesses have greater FWHs than age- and sex-matched controls. We demonstrate that perceivers, naive as to the nature of the stimuli, rate the faces of CEOs as higher in dominance or success, and that ratings of dominance or success are themselves correlated with the FWH ratio. We find no association with other inferred traits such as trustworthiness, attraction or aggression. The latter is surprising given previous research demonstrating a link between FWH and ratings of aggression. We speculate that the core association may be between FWH and drive for dominance or power, but this can be interpreted as aggression only in particular circumstances (e.g., when the stimuli are comprised of faces of young, as opposed to middle-aged, men).

title: Perceptions Now and Then of Occupational Sex Typing: A Replication of Shinar's 1975 Study
abstract: College students’ perceptions of the sex typing of 129 occupations were gathered and compared with those reported by Shinar (1975). Questionnaires were completed by 72 males and 70 females. As in Shinar's study, a continuum of the perceptions of occupations from masculine to feminine was replicated. A comparison of the mean ratings for the occupations and of the percentages of women in each occupation in 1975 and 1988 is reported in a comprehensive table. The results indicated that occupational sex typing continues to exist and that women tend to perceive jobs as being more neutral than men do. However, the occupational sex typing may not be based on the actual percentages of women in the occupations.

title: What's in a Name? A Multiracial Investigation of the Role of Occupational Stereotypes in Selection Decisions
abstract: New York UniversityBertrand & Mullainathan (2002) found evidence that race-typed names can have asignificant influence on the evaluation of re´sume´s. The current study expanded ontheir research by manipulating both the race (Asian American, Black, Hispanic,White) and quality of the re´sume´ (high, low), and by considering occupationalstereotypes as an explanatory mechanism. White male participants (N5155) read afictitious re´sume´, evaluated the applicant, and judged his suitability for jobs. Theresults revealed that Asian American individuals were evaluated highly for high-status jobs, regardless of their re´sume´quality. White and Hispanic applicants bothbenefited from a high-quality re´sume´, but Black applicants were evaluated nega-tively, even with strong credentials. Results of mediation analyses demonstratedthat occupational stereotypes accounted for the relationship between race andevaluations of applicants.

title: Physical Attractiveness Biases in Ratings of Employment Suitability: Tracking Down the “Beauty is Beastly” Effect
abstract: The “what is beautiful is good” heuristic suggests that physically attractive persons benefit from their attractiveness in a large range of situations, including perceptions of employment suitability. Conversely, the “beauty is beastly” effect suggests that attractiveness can be detrimental to women in certain employment contexts, although these findings have been less consistent than those for the “what is beautiful is good” effect. The current research seeks to uncover situations in which beauty might be detrimental for female applicants. In two studies, we found that attractiveness can be detrimental for women applying for masculine sex-typed jobs for which physical appearance is perceived as unimportant.

title: Neutral Job Titles and Occupational Stereotypes: When Legal and Psychological Realities Conflict
abstract: The study of occupational stereotypes contributes to our theoretical understanding of the psychological dynamics of stereotyping and exposes profound practical dilemmas that face a legal system theoretically mandated to guarantee equal employment opportunities. In this article, we review the psychological and legal literature dealing with occupational stereotypes, and we present the results of an empirical study showing that individuals respond differently to purportedly neutral job descriptions depending on sex and ethnicity.

title: Facial Stereotype Visualization Through Image Averaging
abstract: Facial stereotypes are cognitive representations of the facial characteristics of members of social groups. In this study, we examined the extent to which facial stereotypes for occupational groups were based on physiognomic cues to stereotypical social characteristics. In Experiment 1, participants rated the occupational stereotypicality of naturalistic face images. These ratings were then regressed onto independent ratings of the faces on 16 separate traits. These traits, particularly those relevant to the occupational stereotype, explained the majority of variance in occupational stereotypicality ratings. In Experiments 2 and 3, we used trait ratings to reconstruct stereotypical occupation faces from a separate set of images, using face averaging techniques. These reconstructed facial stereotypes were validated by separate groups of participants as conforming to the occupational stereotype. These results indicate that facial cues and group stereotypes are integrated through shared semantic content in the cognitive representations of groups.

title: Physical Appearance and Leadership: Exploring The Role of Appearance-Based Attribution in Leader Emergence
abstract: A study was performed to investigate the role of attribution processes in leader emergence. Photographs of the male and female leaders and nonleaders in a high school senior class were found to elicit different and appropriate attributions of leadership status and related personality traits from naive observers. In addition, separate groups of subjects rated the leaders as more attractive and more maturefaced than the nonleaders. These findings were taken as indicative of the potential importance of schema-based attributions in leader emergence and of the role of appearance cues in the attribution process. The findings have implications for leadership theory, for practical efforts to enhance leader effectiveness, and for research on the identification of personality traits from appearance.

title: Elected in 100 milliseconds: Appearance-Based Trait Inferences and Voting
abstract: Recent research has shown that rapid judgments about the personality traits of political candidates, based solely on their appearance, can predict their electoral success. This suggests that voters rely heavily on appearances when choosing which candidate to elect. Here we review this literature and examine the determinants of the relationship between appearance-based trait inferences and voting. We also reanalyze previous data to show that facial competence is a highly robust and specific predictor of political preferences. Finally, we introduce a computer model of face-based competence judgments, which we use to derive some of the facial features associated with these judgments.

title: The many (distinctive) faces of leadership: Inferring leadership domain from facial appearance
abstract: Previous research has shown that people form impressions of potential leaders from their faces and that certain facial features predict success in reaching prestigious leadership positions. However, much less is known about the accuracy or meta-accuracy of face-based leadership inferences. Here we examine a simple, but important, question: Can leadership domain be inferred from faces? We find that human judges can identify business, military, and sports leaders (but not political leaders) from their faces with above-chance accuracy. However, people are surprisingly bad at evaluating their own performance on this judgment task: We find no relationship between how well judges think they performed and their actual accuracy levels. In a follow-up study, we identify several basic dimensions of evaluation that correlate with face-based judgments of leadership domain, as well as those that predict actual leadership domain. We discuss the implications of our results for leadership perception and selection.

title: The bright and dark sides of leader traits: A review and theoretical extension of the leader trait paradigm
abstract: The leader trait perspective is perhaps the most venerable intellectual tradition in leadership research. Despite its early prominence in leadership research, it quickly fell out of favor among leadership scholars. Thus, despite recent empirical support for the perspective, conceptual work in the area lags behind other theoretical perspectives. Accordingly, the present review attempts to place the leader trait perspective in the context of supporting intellectual traditions, including evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics. We present a conceptual model that considers the source of leader traits, mediators and moderators of their effects on leader emergence and leadership effectiveness, and distinguish between perceived and actual leadership effectiveness. We consider both the positive and negative effects of specific “bright side” personality traits: the Big Five traits, core self-evaluations, intelligence, and charisma. We also consider the positive and negative effects of “dark side” leader traits: Narcissism, hubris, dominance, and Machiavellianism.

title: Leadership, followership, and evolution: some lessons from the past.
abstract: This article analyzes the topic of leadership from an evolutionary perspective and proposes three conclusions that are not part of mainstream theory. First, leading and following are strategies that evolved for solving social coordination problems in ancestral environments, including in particular the problems of group movement, intragroup peacekeeping, and intergroup competition. Second, the relationship between leaders and followers is inherently ambivalent because of the potential for exploitation of followers by leaders. Third, modern organizational structures are sometimes inconsistent with aspects of our evolved leadership psychology, which might explain the alienation and frustration of many citizens and employees. The authors draw several implications of this evolutionary analysis for leadership theory, research, and practice.

title: Facial Structure Is a Reliable Cue of Aggressive Behavior
abstract: Facial width-to-height ratio is a sexually dimorphic metric that is independent of body size and may have been shaped by sexual selection. We recently showed that this metric is correlated with behavioral aggression in men. In Study 1, observers estimated the propensity for aggression of men photographed displaying neutral facial expressions and for whom a behavioral measure of aggression was obtained. The estimates were correlated strongly with the facial width-to-height ratio of the stimulus faces and with the actual aggression of the men. These results were replicated in Study 2, in which the exposure to each stimulus face was shortened to 39 ms. Participants' estimates of aggression for each stimulus face were highly correlated between Study 2 (39-ms exposure) and Study 1 (2,000-ms exposure). These findings suggest that the facial width-to-height ratio may be a cue used to predict propensity for aggression in others.

title: Bad to the bone: facial structure predicts unethical behaviour
abstract: Researchers spanning many scientific domains, including primatology, evolutionary biology and psychology, have sought to establish an evolutionary basis for morality. While researchers have identified social and cognitive adaptations that support ethical behaviour, a consensus has emerged that genetically determined physical traits are not reliable signals of unethical intentions or actions. Challenging this view, we show that genetically determined physical traits can serve as reliable predictors of unethical behaviour if they are also associated with positive signals in intersex and intrasex selection. Specifically, we identify a key physical attribute, the facial width-to-height ratio, which predicts unethical behaviour in men. Across two studies, we demonstrate that men with wider faces (relative to facial height) are more likely to explicitly deceive their counterparts in a negotiation, and are more willing to cheat in order to increase their financial gain. Importantly, we provide evidence that the link between facial metrics and unethical behaviour is mediated by a psychological sense of power. Our results demonstrate that static physical attributes can indeed serve as reliable cues of immoral action, and provide additional support for the view that evolutionary forces shape ethical judgement and behaviour.

title: No evidence for sexual dimorphism of facial width-to-height ratio in four large adult samples
abstract: Sexual dimorphism in physical appearance may be an important cue in both intra- and intersex competition. Recently, the facial width-toheight ratio (fWHR) has been proposed as a novel sexually dimorphic morphologic measure, with men suggested to have a higher fWHR than women. Currently, however, the status of fWHR as a sexually dimorphic trait is unclear. Here we tested for sexual dimorphism in fWHR, as well as in three additional, previously reported facial measures, in four (three Caucasian and one African) independent samples. In three of the four samples, no significant sex differences in fWHR were observed. In one sample, males showed a significantly lower (rather than higher) fWHR than females (this effect was no longer significant after controlling for body mass index). By contrast, significant and large sex differences were observed in all four samples for each of the three previously validated facial metrics, namely, (a) lower face/face height, (b) cheekbone prominence, and (c) face width/lower face height. These results provide strong evidence against the claim that fWHR, at least as measured from the surface of the face, is sexually dimorphic.

title: Inferences of Competence from Faces Predict Election Outcomes
abstract: We show that inferences of competence based solely on facial appearance predicted the outcomes of U.S. congressional elections better than chance (e.g., 68.8% of the Senate races in 2004) and also were linearly related to the margin of victory. These inferences were specific to competence and occurred within a 1-second exposure to the faces of the candidates. The findings suggest that rapid, unreflective trait inferences can contribute to voting choices, which are widely assumed to be based primarily on rational and deliberative considerations.

title: Who may frown and who should smile? Dominance, affiliation, and the display of happiness and anger
abstract: Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that the social stereotype that anger displays are more appropriate for men and smiling is requisite for women is based on the perception of men and women as more or less dominant or affiliative. The first study tested the mediation model that men are rated as more dominant and women as more affiliative and that expectations for men to show more anger and for women to smile more are partially mediated by this difference in perception. Second, a vignette approach was used to test the notion that these expectations translate into prescriptive social norms that are based on levels of perceived dominance and affiliation rather than sex per se. The results strongly support this hypothesis for dominance and provide partial confirmation for affiliation.

title: Overview of the face recognition grand challenge
abstract: Over the last couple of years, face recognition researchers have been developing new techniques. These developments are being fueled by advances in computer vision techniques, computer design, sensor design, and interest in fielding face recognition systems. Such advances hold the promise of reducing the error rate in face recognition systems by an order of magnitude over Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2002 results. The face recognition grand challenge (FRGC) is designed to achieve this performance goal by presenting to researchers a six-experiment challenge problem along with data corpus of 50,000 images. The data consists of 3D scans and high resolution still imagery taken under controlled and uncontrolled conditions. This paper describes the challenge problem, data corpus, and presents baseline performance and preliminary results on natural statistics of facial imagery.

title: Interval Estimation for a Binomial Proportion
abstract: We revisit the problem of interval estimation of a binomial proportion. The erratic behavior of the coverage probability of the stan- d ardWaldconfid ence interval has previously been remarkedon in the literature (Blyth andStill, Agresti andCoull, Santner andothers). We begin by showing that the chaotic coverage properties of the Waldinter- val are far more persistent than is appreciated. Furthermore, common textbook prescriptions regarding its safety are misleading and defective in several respects andcannot be trusted . This leads us to consideration of alternative intervals. A number of natural alternatives are presented, each with its motivation and con- text. Each interval is examinedfor its coverage probability andits length. Basedon this analysis, we recommendthe Wilson interval or the equal- tailedJeffreys prior interval for small n andthe interval suggestedin Agresti andCoull for larger n. We also provide an additional frequentist justification for use of the Jeffreys interval.

title: Fooled by first impressions? Reexamining the diagnostic value of appearance-based inferences
abstract: We often form opinions about the characteristics of others from single, static samples of their appearance – the very first thing we see when, or even before, we meet them. These inferences occur spontaneously, rapidly, and can impact decisions in a variety of important domains. A crucial question, then, is whether appearance-based inferences are accurate. Using a naturalistic data set of more than 1 million appearance-based judgments obtained from a popular website (Study 1) and data from an online experiment involving over a thousand participants (Study 2), we evaluate the ability of human judges to infer the characteristics of others from their appearances. We find that judges are generally less accurate at predicting characteristics than they would be if they ignored appearance cues and instead only relied on their knowledge of characteristic base-rate frequencies. The findings suggest that appearances are overweighed in judgments and can have detrimental effects on accuracy. We conclude that future research should (i) identify the specific visual cues that people use when they draw inferences from appearances, (ii) determine which of these cues promote or hinder accurate social judgments, and (iii) examine how inference goals and contexts moderate the use and diagnostic validity of these cues.

title: Facing Fate: Estimates of Longevity From Facial Appearance and Their Underlying Cues
abstract: Life span is associated with a number of physical and social factors, including health, personality, and socioeconomic status. Here, we examined whether life longevity could be predicted from facial appearance. We asked participants to view headshots from a 1923 university yearbook and to estimate how long they thought each person lived, finding that participants’ judgments predicted targets’ actual age of death. Additional participants rated the photos along a variety of characteristics previously found to predict longevity. Judgments of wealth were most closely related to perceived longevity, providing stronger predictive power than perceptions of health, attractiveness, or personality. These results demonstrate that longevity can be accurately judged from faces alone, and that assessments of traits related to actual longevity underlie the accurate perception of life span.  A BSTRACT Studies on social demographics have demonstrated that life span is influenced by a number of parameters related to one’s physical health and to the external environment. The current study examined whether longevity could be predicted from the face alone and, if so, the characteristics that relate to accurate judgments of longevity. Participants (N 212) viewed 100 portraits from a 1923 university yearbook and were asked to estimate how long each person lived. A structural equation model revealed that estimates of longevity significantly predicted targets’ actual age of death ( .30, t 2.27, p 0.02). To explore the mechanisms underlying these judgments, we examined perceptions of the faces along a set of variables related to actual life span. Perceptions of health and attractiveness ( .21, t 2.77, p .01), power ( .25, t 3.32, p .01) and wealth ( .52, t 6.48, p .01) predicted participants’ judgments of longevity, with perceived wealth showing the strongest relationship to estimated age of death. Overall, these results demonstrate that demographic factors that affect life span may also affect facial appearance, affording accurate judgments of longevity based on the face alone.