[LINK] o/t Beware fatheads in business
stephen at melbpc.org.au
stephen at melbpc.org.au
Thu Jul 7 19:27:31 AEST 2011
<http://theconversation.edu.au/study-links-face-shape-to-lying-2217>
Men with wide faces are more likely to lie and cheat to get ahead than
their narrow-faced brethren, according to new research.
However, the study has drawn criticism from psychologists who say it may
have underestimated other factors driving behaviour.
In a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee found that wide-faced men tend to report feeling more powerful,
but that this can embolden them to lie in business or cheat to make more
money.
For the first time, we show that persistent physical traits can indeed
predict unethical actions, the paper said.
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.
In one experiment, 192 Masters of Business Administration students (of
which 115 were men) participated in a Bullard Houses negotiation
exercise, where one played the role of a property seller and the other a
potential buyer. The seller was under instructions not to sell if the
property is to be used for a commercial development, while the buyer was
asked to try to get the property without revealing their secret plan to
turn it into a hotel.
Our interest in this study was whether the buyer explicitly misstated
his or her intentions to the seller, the paper said.
Men with wider faces were approximately three times as likely to
explicitly deceive their negotiation partners than narrow-faced men, the
results showed. For the women, there was no link between facial width and
deception.
In another study, 103 subjects (of which 50 were men) were asked to fill
in a survey which included questions about how powerful they felt, then
enter a lottery to win a $50 gift card.
The number of times they were allowed to enter the lottery depended on
the score obtained by rolling a simulated dice on a website rolling a
higher score meant they could boost their chances of winning a prize. But
a deliberate design flaw allowed the subjects to cheat by ignoring the
score they rolled and enter a higher number.
Men with wider faces cheated more and overstated their dice results by an
estimated 18.6% and survey results showed they were more likely to report
that they felt powerful.
If men with greater facial width-to-height ratios are treated in ways
that make them feel more powerful, this may foster a psychological sense
of power which then affects ethical judgement and behaviour, the authors
wrote.
Thus, future research should carefully examine the ways in which facial
morphology relates to facial perceptions, and the effect of this
relationship on psychological traits and ethical behaviour.
Perhaps some men truly are bad to the bone.
However, the experiments may have failed to take into account longer term
issues affecting behaviour and the environmental factors influencing how
certain genes were expressed, said Dr Carolyn Semmler from the University
of Adelaides School of Psychology.
The authors of this study have not examined how the facial features of
these males as children may have shaped their parents' behaviour toward
them or anyone elses behaviour, for that matter, she said.
To establish this relationship and understand the interactions, you
would need to have followed these men from birth, assessing all of their
interactions with the social and physical world.
Dr Semmler also pointed out that the subjects in the first experiment
were all from an MBA course.
They are hardly likely to be the group most representative of the
population in terms of moral behaviour. There is a clear selection bias,
she said.
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