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Physical Appearance and Leadership: Exploring The Role of Appearance‐Based Attribution in Leader Emergence
Author(s) -
Cherulnik Paul D.,
Turns Laurie C.,
Wilderman Scott K.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1990.tb01491.x
Subject(s) - attribution , psychology , social psychology , personality , schema (genetic algorithms) , big five personality traits , developmental psychology , machine learning , computer science
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.