Spisak, B., Dekker, P., Kruger, M., & Van Vugt, M. (2012).

Warriors and peacekeepers: Testing a biosocial implict leadership hypothesis of intergroup relations using masculine and feminine faces.

PloS ONE (7)1: e30399. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0030399

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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.