Very few people in the world would consider the present crop of leaders and politicians as being the brightest or the best. Brian Spisak, Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Organization at VU University in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, has developed a test that explains why people pick bad leaders.
Spisak and colleagues propose that people select leaders on implicit characteristics like health, attractiveness, and intelligence and look for signs of these traits in the leader’s faces. The researchers tested their concept with 148 women and men selected at random. The test subjects wee asked to select the best candidate to be chief executive officer of a company based on predefined company goals. The people only saw different versions of the candidate’s faces as the basis for their selection.
The versions of the same potential candidate’s face were varied to make them appear more or less healthy, intelligent, or attractive. Healthy looks ruled the day with 69 percent of both men and women selecting the healthier looking candidate for the position regardless of the goals set for that person to achieve. More intelligent looking people were preferred for positions that required diplomacy and inventiveness.
While the trial was predicated on selecting a business manager the results could and probably should be just as applicable to the selection of political leaders. In the United States the majority of people that vote do not really begin considering candidates until the middle of the month before elections. Emotion rather than ration, a discernible capacity to lead, or a verifiable record of goal-oriented success rules the election process.
