IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0187957.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Facial width-to-height ratio differs by social rank across organizations, countries, and value systems

Author

Listed:
  • Tim Hahn
  • Nils R Winter
  • Christine Anderl
  • Karolien Notebaert
  • Alina Marie Wuttke
  • Celina Chantal Clément
  • Sabine Windmann

Abstract

Facial Width-to-Height Ratio (fWHR) has been linked with dominant and aggressive behavior in human males. We show here that on portrait photographs published online, chief executive officers (CEOs) of companies listed in the Dow Jones stock market index and the Deutscher Aktienindex have a higher-than-normal fWHR, which also correlates positively with their company’s donations to charitable causes and environmental awareness. Furthermore, we show that leaders of the world’s most influential non-governmental organizations and even the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, the popes, have higher fWHR compared to controls on public portraits, suggesting that the relationship between displayed fWHR and leadership is not limited to profit-seeking organizations. The data speak against the simplistic view that wider-faced men achieve higher social status through antisocial tendencies and overt aggression, or the mere signaling of such dispositions. Instead they suggest that high fWHR is linked with high social rank in a more subtle fashion in both competitive as well as prosocially oriented settings.

Suggested Citation

  • Tim Hahn & Nils R Winter & Christine Anderl & Karolien Notebaert & Alina Marie Wuttke & Celina Chantal Clément & Sabine Windmann, 2017. "Facial width-to-height ratio differs by social rank across organizations, countries, and value systems," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(11), pages 1-14, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0187957
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187957
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0187957
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0187957&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0187957?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. C. Eisenegger & M. Naef & R. Snozzi & M. Heinrichs & E. Fehr, 2010. "Prejudice and truth about the effect of testosterone on human bargaining behaviour," Nature, Nature, vol. 463(7279), pages 356-359, January.
    2. Matthias Wibral & Thomas Dohmen & Dietrich Klingmüller & Bernd Weber & Armin Falk, 2012. "Testosterone Administration Reduces Lying in Men," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(10), pages 1-5, October.
    3. Ho, Daniel & Imai, Kosuke & King, Gary & Stuart, Elizabeth A., 2011. "MatchIt: Nonparametric Preprocessing for Parametric Causal Inference," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 42(i08).
    4. Janka I Stoker & Harry Garretsen & Luuk J Spreeuwers, 2016. "The Facial Appearance of CEOs: Faces Signal Selection but Not Performance," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(7), pages 1-11, July.
    5. Jack van Honk & Estrella R. Montoya & Peter A. Bos & Mark van Vugt & David Terburg, 2012. "New evidence on testosterone and cooperation," Nature, Nature, vol. 485(7399), pages 4-5, May.
    6. Yuping Jia & Laurence Van Lent & Yachang Zeng, 2014. "Masculinity, Testosterone, and Financial Misreporting," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(5), pages 1195-1246, December.
    7. Michael P Haselhuhn & Elaine M Wong & Margaret E Ormiston, 2013. "Self-Fulfilling Prophecies as a Link between Men’s Facial Width-to-Height Ratio and Behavior," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-7, August.
    8. Kosuke Imai & Gary King & Elizabeth A. Stuart, 2008. "Misunderstandings between experimentalists and observationalists about causal inference," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 171(2), pages 481-502, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Licht, Amir N. & Adams, Renee B., 2020. "Shareholders and Stakeholders around the World: The Role of Values, Culture, and Law in Directors' Decisions," LawFin Working Paper Series 13, Goethe University, Center for Advanced Studies on the Foundations of Law and Finance (LawFin).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marcelo Arbex & Justin M. Carre & Shawn N. Geniole & Enlinson Mattos, 2018. "Testosterone, personality traits and tax evasion," Working Papers 1801, University of Windsor, Department of Economics.
    2. Arbex, Marcelo Aarestru & Carré, Justin M. & Geniole, Shawn N. & Mattos, Enlinson, 2018. "Tax evasion, testosterone and personality traits," Textos para discussão 466, FGV EESP - Escola de Economia de São Paulo, Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brazil).
    3. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Espín, Antonio M. & Garcia, Teresa & Kovářík, Jaromír, 2018. "Digit ratio (2D:4D) predicts pro-social behavior in economic games only for unsatisfied individuals," MPRA Paper 86166, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Victoria Fan, Anup Karan, and Anjay Mahal, 2012. "State Health Insurance and Out-of-Pocket Health Expenditures in Andhra Pradesh, India - Working Paper 298," Working Papers 298, Center for Global Development.
    5. Yansong Li & Elise Météreau & Ignacio Obeso & Luigi Butera & Marie Claire Villeval & Jean-Claude Dreher, 2020. "Endogenous testosterone is associated with increased striatal response to audience effects during prosocial choices," Post-Print hal-02990573, HAL.
    6. Bonnefon, Jean-François & De Neys, Wim & Hopfensitz, Astrid, 2013. "Low second-to-fourth digit ratio predicts indiscriminate social suspicion, not improved trustworthiness detection," TSE Working Papers 13-385, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    7. Riccardo D'Alberto & Francesco Pagliacci & Matteo Zavalloni, 2023. "A socioeconomic impact assessment of three Italian national parks," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(1), pages 114-147, January.
    8. Vargas Da Cruz,Marcio Jose, 2014. "Do export promotion agencies promote new exporters ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7004, The World Bank.
    9. Eva Ranehill & Niklas Zethraeus & Liselott Blomberg & Bo von Schoultz & Angelica Lindén Hirschberg & Magnus Johannesson & Anna Dreber, 2018. "Hormonal Contraceptives Do Not Impact Economic Preferences: Evidence from a Randomized Trial," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(10), pages 4515-4532, October.
    10. Lou Safra & Nicolas Baumard & Valentin Wyart & Coralie Chevallier, 2020. "Social motivation is associated with increased weight granted to cooperation-related impressions in face evaluation tasks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(4), pages 1-17, April.
    11. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Chowdhury, Subhasish M. & Espín, Antonio M. & Nieboer, Jeroen, 2023. "‘Born this Way’? Prenatal exposure to testosterone may determine behavior in competition and conflict," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    12. Zunxin Zheng & Donghui Li & Tingyong Zhong & Tian Wang & Ling He, 2023. "CEO facial structure and stock price crash risk," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(S1), pages 873-905, April.
    13. Victoria Fan & Anup Karan & Ajay Mahal, 2012. "State health insurance and out-of-pocket health expenditures in Andhra Pradesh, India," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 189-215, September.
    14. K. Hung Chan & Ray R. Wang & Ruixin Wang, 2021. "The Macbeth Factor: The Dark Side of Achievement‐driving Analysts," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 57(2), pages 325-361, June.
    15. Vargas Da Cruz,Marcio Jose, 2014. "Do export promotion agencies promote new exporters ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7004, The World Bank.
    16. Richard Aviles-Lopez & Juan de Dios Luna del Castillo & Miguel Ángel Montero-Alonso, 2023. "Exploratory Matching Model Search Algorithm (EMMSA) for Causal Analysis: Application to the Cardboard Industry," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-34, October.
    17. Quynh-Lam Tran & Gregorio Benitez & Fadi Shehadeh & Matthew Kaczynski & Eleftherios Mylonakis, 2022. "Clinical Outcomes Associated with SARS-CoV-2 Co-Infection with Rhinovirus and Adenovirus in Adults—A Retrospective Matched Cohort Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(1), pages 1-13, December.
    18. Marco Caliendo & Stefan Tübbicke, 2020. "New evidence on long-term effects of start-up subsidies: matching estimates and their robustness," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1605-1631, October.
    19. Marie Claire Villeval, 2019. "Comportements (non) éthiques et stratégies morales," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 70(6), pages 1021-1046.
    20. Wendy Chan, 2018. "Applications of Small Area Estimation to Generalization With Subclassification by Propensity Scores," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 43(2), pages 182-224, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0187957. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.