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Tall claims? Sense and nonsense about the importance of height of US presidents
... Taller men also obtain power and leadership roles and are deferred to in social situations. Male height is associated with high social status, leadership attainment and social mobility, with weaker (Judge & Cable, 2004;Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst, & Pollet, 2013) or null results (Bielicki & Charzewski, 1983;Case & Paxson, 2008;Gawley, Perks, & Curtis, 2009;Hamstra, 2014) for women. Taller men are judged as more dominant by others, and we overestimate the height of more dominant men (Stulp et al., 2013;Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst, & Pollet, 2012). ...
... Male height is associated with high social status, leadership attainment and social mobility, with weaker (Judge & Cable, 2004;Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst, & Pollet, 2013) or null results (Bielicki & Charzewski, 1983;Case & Paxson, 2008;Gawley, Perks, & Curtis, 2009;Hamstra, 2014) for women. Taller men are judged as more dominant by others, and we overestimate the height of more dominant men (Stulp et al., 2013;Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst, & Pollet, 2012). Men manipulated to artificially appear taller to group members exert greater influence over decisions on group tasks and greater dominance in conversations (Huang, Olson, & Olson, 2002). ...
... I controlled for a larger number of possible mediators than is typical for studies of this type, which reduces the unique effects of height compared to previous studies. Height will also have an influence on attitudes indirectly through increasing occupational success, educational attainment and income (Judge & Cable, 2004;Meyer & Selmer, 1999;Stulp et al., 2013). ...
People vary widely in their attitudes towards how much their government should redistribute wealth. Evolutionary theory may shed light on why this variation occurs. Numerous studies have established an association between upper body strength and attitudes towards equality and wealth redistribution in males, showing that physically stronger men are more likely to hold self-serving beliefs on these issues. This effect is typically weaker or absent in women. A question that has received little attention is whether there are similar associations between other aspects of formidability and attitudes towards wealth redistribution. One such aspect is height. I tested this prediction using data from the European Social Survey, in a sample of 27031 people from 20 European countries. Results show that taller people are more likely to have self-serving attitudes towards government redistribution of wealth. The result was robust to numerous control variables and alternative model specifications, but the direct effects of height were small. Taller individuals were less supportive of government wealth redistribution overall, but were especially averse if they were also wealthier. Post-hoc analyses suggested that for lower income deciles, the association was reversed. For these people, there was a positive association between height and support for wealth redistribution. However, effects were equally strong in males and females, and so are not fully consistent with current evolutionary psychological theories of resource distribution.
... This phenomenon is referred to as the "male-taller norm" (Beigel, 1954;Gillis and Avis, 1980). This effect seems to be driven by women, who prefer tall men much more than men prefer short women (Stulp et al., 2013a(Stulp et al., , 2013b(Stulp et al., , 2013c(Stulp et al., , 2013d. Some studies postulate that the male-taller norm evolved in ancient times, when men's physical strength and violence determined resource allocation, mate access, and thus reproductive success (Murray and Schmitz, 2011;Puts, 2010;Puts et al., 2015;Salska et al., 2008). ...
... Dominance, competitiveness, and masculinity could help a man fulfill his responsibilities in ancient times. These traits can be signaled by the man's physicality: Studies have shown that height is positively associated with masculinity, dominance, authority, prestige, and leadership (Blaker et al., 2013;Knapen et al., 2019;Murray and Schmitz, 2011;Stulp et al., 2012Stulp et al., , 2013aStulp et al., , 2013bStulp et al., , 2013cStulp et al., , 2013d. Furthermore, recent figures show that tall men, on average, benefit from relatively high income, social status, and educational attainment (Böckerman et al., 2017;Case and Paxson, 2008;Cinnirella et al., 2011;Deaton and Arora, 2009;Yamamura et al., 2015). ...
... By contrast, men who place importance on traditional gender-role norms cannot accept female partners who they perceive as too tall or too short, as they have a narrow range of acceptable heights for their female partners. This suggests that men who think gender roles are important are more likely to comply with not only the male-taller norm but also the male-nottoo-tall norm, which holds that people prefer the height difference between a husband and wife to be within a certain positive range (Stulp et al., 2013a(Stulp et al., , 2013b(Stulp et al., , 2013c(Stulp et al., , 2013d. ...
This study used Taiwan’s Panel Study of Family Dynamics (PSFD) 2016 data to investigate the relationship between gender-role ideology and height preference in mate selection, finding that women prefer a tall partner much more than men prefer a short partner. However, when traditional gender norms prevail, men with a high levels of adherence to gender-role ideology cannot accept a female partner who is either too tall or too short. Men’s height preferences are more responsive to social norms than women’s, while women’s height preferences are more sensitive to their own demographic characteristics than men’s. The tallest and shortest female partners accepted by men with strong traditional gender-role ideology are 2.37 cm shorter and 2.21 cm taller, respectively, than men who disagree with gender norms. In marriage, gender-role ideology is not relevant to partner height, regardless of sex.
... Tall men experience many advantages in their lives, and high stature is associated with a positive social perception. For example, tall men are more likely to win political elections (McCann, 2001), since they are considered to communicate better and to have more leadership skills than shorter candidates (Persico et al., 2004;Stulp et al., 2013). ...
... Moreover, research findings may support the conclusion that taller men are more successful (McCann, 2001;Persico et al., 2004;Stulp et al., 2013;Subramanian et al., 2011). The outcomes suggest a positive association between the height of the men, and owning a car, having children, and living in a single-family detached unit. ...
Numerous studies have demonstrated that in western societies women are perceived as more attractive with weight drop (proxied by the BMI measure, where BMI = WEIGHT ( kg ) HEIGHT 2 ( meter 2 ) , while men are perceived as more attractive with height rise. The objective of this study is to test the hypothesis that as BMI rises for a woman, she has to compromise and marry shorter men. The study is based on the 2016 wave of the Israeli longitudinal survey. We observe the cross-sectional correlation between the married couples' height, weight, BMI, age, number of children, and proxies for accumulated wealth. The first part of the analysis tests the research hypothesis directly, while the second part of the analysis adds control variables. Research findings support the research hypothesis. Under equal conditions, the projected drop in the height of the male’ corresponds to an increase in the female’s BMI and age. Moreover, research findings may support the conclusion that taller men are more successful. The outcomes suggest positive association between the height of the men, and owning a car, having children, and living in a single family detached unit.
... Daha uzun adayların avantajı, uzun boya dair yerleşik algılar ile açıklanabilir, daha uzun başkanlar, uzmanlar tarafından "daha büyük" olarak derecelendirilir ve daha fazla liderlik ve iletişim becerisine sahip olduğu söylenir. Çalışma ile siyasi liderlerin seçilmesinde ve değerlendirilmesinde boyun önemli bir özellik olduğu anlaşılmıştır (Stulp, 2013). ...
... **** Gaziantep University, Department of Public Relations and Publicity, E-mail:oguzgoxsu@gmail.com Interpreting Persuasion in Politics Through the Works of Robert B. Cialdini praise (compliment), familiarity and cooperation (Cialdini, 2006). Following studies confirm his claim (Efrain, 1974;Marlowe, 1996;Judge, 2004;Stulp, 2013;Emswiller, 1971;Woodside, 1974;Seiter, 2007;Burger, 2004;Grant, 2010;Bornstein, 1987;Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood and Sherif, 1961). The following studies show that people obey orders when they are under pressure of an authority figure. ...
Siyaset hakkında neredeyse herkesin bir fikri ve söyleyecek bir sözü vardır. Siyasetin insanların gündelik hayatını doğrudan etkilemesi sebebiyle bireyler de bu konular hakkında görüşlerini açıkla-makta, eyleme geçmekte ve bir araya gelerek çeşitli şekillerde baskı grupları oluşturmaktadır. Oy verme davranışı, kitle psikolojisiyle yakından ilişkilidir. Çünkü bireyler kendi kararlarını verirken kimi zaman çoğunluğun kararlarını dikkate alırlar. Böylece çoğunluğun kararlarına göre hareket etmek kişiye yalnız olmadığı hissini vermektedir. Başta kararsız seçmenler olmak üzere seçmenlerin önemli bir kısmı kendi kararlarının yanı sıra çevrelerinin kararlarını da ölçmekte, kitle iletişim araçlarını ta-kip etmekte ve buna bağlı olarak bir karara varmaktadır. İkna kavramının ilk kullanımı Antik Yunan dönemine kadar uzanmakta ve bir çalışma alanı olarak ikna konusu günümüzde hala popülerliğini korumaktadır. Araştırma, Robert Cialdini'inin Dünya' da çeşitli dillere çevrilen ve yüzbinlerce okuyucuya ulaşan "İknanın Psikolojisi" kitabında anlatılan 6 ikna tekniği üzerine inşa edilmiştir. İkna olgusunu siyasi bir perspektiften ele alan bu çalışmanın örneklemini Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi ve Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi oluşturmaktadır. Çalışmanın amacı, yakın geçmişte Robert Cialdini'nin belirlediği 6 ikna tekniğinin siyasette nasıl karşılık bulduğunu ortaya koymaktır. Gerçekleştirilen literatür taraması karşılık yaratma, tutarlılık ve bağlılık, toplumsal kanıt, beğeni, otorite ve azlık ilkelerinin Türk seçmeni üzerinde çeşitli şekillerde yansıdığını göstermiştir. Cialdini'nin tespit ettiği 6 ikna tekniğinin Türkiye'nin siyasi pratikleri bağlamında ilk kez değerlendirilmesi çalışmayı önemli kılmaktadır.
... The dimension of height has been closely studied in relation to leadership styles [4], career progression [5], income [6], decision making [7], and risk taking [8][9][10]. Research examining the height of United States (US) Presidents-even with a sample size of fewer than 50 males-highlights the direct and indirect influences that people expect to be associated with being tall or short [11,12]. As an illustration of the generally positive relationship that has been found between height and leadership-especially but not exclusively for men [13], Murray and Schmitz [14] report that men who are relatively tall are more likely to view themselves as qualified to serve in leadership positons. ...
... Our studies provide convergent lines of evidence that suggest that people tend to view extra weight or size, at least, to be a positive contribution for men but not women. Against the backdrop of studies showing discrimination against overweight or obese individuals-especially women with above-average body mass index [78,79], our studies suggest that the perception of influential leadership (as measured by persuasiveness ratings) tends to be associated with above-normal weight or size, for men, complementary with prior research showing the benefits of relative tallness for men [11,12]. ...
Height has been closely studied as a factor that influences myriad measures of leadership; however, the potential influence of weight on socially beneficial traits has been neglected. Using the anthropological concept of “big men” who relied on influence to lead their communities, we examine the role of weight upon persuasiveness. We present the results of six studies that suggest a tendency for raters to expect larger body mass to correspond with more persuasiveness among men. In the sixth, pre-registered study, we find evidence that fits the hypothesis that weight among men is positively associated with perceived persuasiveness. While the “big man” leadership concept is based on studies of pre-industrial societies where weight embodied status, our findings suggest an evolved bias to favor moderately big men–with respect to perceived persuasiveness–even in environments where there is no reason to interpret over-consumption of food and conservation of energy as a signal of wealth. Our studies contribute novel perspectives on the relevance of weight as an understudied dimension of “big” and offer an important qualification informed by evolutionary perspectives for the stigmatizing effects of relatively large body mass.
... For example, among the Tsimané, an Amazonian small-scale society, physically stronger individuals gained more social support and higher status than weaker individuals (N ¼ 57, von Rueden et al., 2008). Also, taller candidates in the U.S. presidential elections received more popular votes than their opponents and were also more likely to be reelected (N ¼ 46 elections, Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst, & Pollet, 2013). These examples indicate that men's bodily dominance is an influential characteristic regarding their potential for achieving and maintaining high status and leadership positions. ...
... Leadership evolved primarily for coordinating physical tasks such as group movement, coalitional aggression, and defense, whereas contemporary conflicts and status contests are less physical and aggressive (Li, van Vugt, & Colarelli, 2018). The fact that physical dominance signals are still associated with status and leadership in modern, large-scale societies (e.g., height, Stulp et al., 2013;facial maturity, Re et al., 2013) can be thought of as an evolutionary mismatch. According to the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis (Li et al., 2018;Schlaepfer, Runge, & Sherman, 2002), human psychology is adapted to past environments which markedly differ from modern contexts in some regard, creating a partial mismatch between evolved psychological mechanisms and the modern environment (but see Hagen, 2014 for claims that in some respects modern contexts are comparable to past environments). ...
Recent studies suggest that both facial and bodily dominance promote high status positions and predict status-seeking behaviors such as aggression and social dominance. An evolutionarily relevant context in which associations between these dominance signals and status outcomes may be prevalent are face-to-face status contests. The present study examined whether facial and bodily dominance predicted success in dyadic competitions (one physical discipline, arm wrestling, and three nonphysical disciplines) in men (N = 125) in a controlled laboratory setting. Men's bodies and faces were independently rated for physical dominance, and associations of these ratings with contest outcomes as well as mediating and moderating variables (such as physical strength, body height, trait dominance, baseline and reactive testosterone) were examined. Both facial and bodily dominance positively predicted success in the physical discipline, mediated by physical strength, but not in the three nonphysical disciplines. Our findings demonstrate that facial and bodily physical dominance may be honest signals for men's formidability and hence status potential, at least in a physically competitive context.
... The values for r.squared in the last column are for the complete model. (Huchard et al. 2016), and the observation that network hubs are preferentially occupied by tall people (Stulp et al. 2013;Hermanussen & Scheffler 2016) inspired us to perform this study. Therefore we investigated in more detail the possible effect of migration on the secular trend if migration is biased on height. ...
... The Swiss type networks for instance responded only marginally on this effect induced by migration. Such effects may be important in social networks where taller individuals might be more present in hubs than in marginal positions (Stulp et al. 2013). We hope that the published observations in this article might convince the reader that a secular trend mediated through "tall by migration" could be a plausible scenario in certain situations of human history. ...
Background: Recent research reported height biased migration of taller individuals and a Monte Carlo simulation showed that such preferential migration of taller individuals into network hubs can induce a secular trend of height. In the simulation model taller agents in the hubs raise the overall height of all individuals in the network by a community effect. However, it could be seen that the actual network structure influences the strength of this effect. In this paper the background and the influence of the network structure on the strength of the secular trend by migration is investigated. Material and methods: Three principal network types are analyzed: networks derived from street connections in Switzerland, more regular fishing net like networks and randomly generated ones. Our networks have between 10 and 152 nodes and between 20 and 307 edges connecting the nodes. Depending on the network size between 5.000 and 90.000 agents with an average height of 170cm (SD 6.5cm) are initially released into the network. In each iteration new agents are regenerated based on the actual average body height of the previous iteration and, to a certain proportion, corrected by body heights in the neighboring nodes. After generating new agents, a certain number of them migrated into neighbor nodes, the model let preferentially taller agents migrate into network hubs. Migration is balanced by back migration of the same number of agents from nodes with high centrality measures to less connected nodes. The latter is random as well, but not biased by the agents height. Furthermore the distribution of agents per node and their correlation to the centrality of the nodes is varied in a systematic manner. After 100 iterations, the secular trend, i.e. the gain in body height for the different networks, is investigated in relation to the network properties. Results: We observe an increase of average agent body height after 100 iterations if height biased migration is enabled. The increase rate depends on the height of the neighboring factor, the population distribution, the relationship between population in the nodes and their centrality as well as on the network topology. Networks with uniform like distributions of the agents in the nodes, uncorrelated associations between node centrality and agent number per node, as well as very heterogeneous networks with very different node centralities lead to biggest gains in average body height. Conclusion: Our simulations show, that height biased migration into network hubs can possibly contribute to the secular trend of height increase in the human population. The strength of this "tall by migration" event depends on the actual properties of the underlying network. There is a possible significance of this mechanism for social networks, when hubs are represented by individuals and edges as their personal relationships. However, the required high number of iterations to achieve significant effects in more natural network structures in our models requires further studies to test the relevance and real effect sizes in real world scenarios.
... The question has continued to intrigue researchers and there is some support for the notion that tall men are more likely to attain leadership positions compared to shorter men (Judge & Cable, 2004;Lindqvist, 2011), although there is a probable bias in reporting (Elgar, 2016). The possible association has been linked to psychological research suggesting that tall people are seen as more persuasive, impressive and capable (Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst, & Pollet, 2013). Interestingly enough there also seems to be evidence of a reciprocal connection in the sense that people in prestigious positions are perceived to be taller than they are (Lindqvist, 2011). ...
... We were only able to include measures of physical characteristics in the analysis of leadership assessment in connection with the draft. As has been noted in other studies body height is strongly associated with perceptions of leadership (Stulp et al., 2013). The body height bonus was noteworthy, with a 0.3 increase on the assessment scale for every 10-cm increase in height. ...
Research on leadership emergence has mainly focused on adulthood and relied on retrospective accounts of childhood factors. Based on a prospective cohort study of 7719 boys born in 1953, of which 5928 were later drafted, we explored individual differences in leadership emergence in childhood and early adulthood. The data set consisted of register data from different time points and a survey of the cohort in the 6th grade. As expected, cognitive ability, tallness and muscular power were decisive for assessment of military officer suitability. However, we also found a moderate to strong impact on this assessment score from social class, leadership aspirations in childhood, birth order, self-regulatory skills in school, parental support, and previous participation in extracurricular activities. Similarly, social class, cognitive ability, developmental experiences, and birth order were important for nominations as class party organizer in the 6th grade. Delay of gratification was not associated with these nominations at all and was neutralized by cognitive ability in relation to officer suitability. The results strongly support a life-cycle approach to leadership emergence.
... 2016). In addition, taller people are more likely to be hired or promoted to management roles (Egolf & Corder, 1991) and elected to political office (Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst, & Pollet, 2013). It appears that height plays an important role in evolutionary and social functions people find themselves in. ...
Height is a fundamental variable in intersexual selection and intrasexual competition. Taller men are rated as more desirable and formidable as romantic partners and rivals, respectively, than shorter ones. In this study (NMTurk = 302; 63% male), we focused on the latter and examined individual differences in (a) intrasexual competition, (b) self-reported height in centimeters, and (c) perceptions of one’s height. We found that (a) shorter people, men in particular, scored higher on intrasexual envy, jealousy, and competitiveness; (b) those who had a shorter ideal height, men in particular, scored higher on intrasexual envy and jealousy; (c) both sexes with a greater desire to be taller were more intrasexually competitive regardless of the aspect of intrasexual competitiveness; and (d) those who were shorter or reported shorter ideal heights and desired to be taller scored higher on intrasexual jealousy and competitiveness. We replicated effects about body image and intrasexual competition and link, for the first time that we are aware of, individual differences in height and attitudes therein with individual differences in intrasexual competitiveness.
... However, the autonomy violation in Study 2 was not seen as more likely from those rated low in morality, suggesting this association is somewhat distinct from untrustworthiness. Highly dominant individuals often have high social status [126], and the appearance of dominance is often preferred in romantic partners [127], politicians [128], and colleagues [129]. As such, it may be that those who commit autonomy violations maintain some value as social connections (albeit with some necessary wariness and less stability [126]). ...
A trait labelled as “morality” has been argued to be perceived and prioritised during first impressions of faces; however, immorality is not a homogenous concept. Violations of purity are frequently distinguished from other violations via distinct behavioural and emotional patterns, arguably stemming from physical disgust, sexual content, or “weirdness” impure scenarios. In the current research, participants were asked to rate unfamiliar faces based on social traits and their likelihood of engaging in immoral or nonmoral behaviours. Across two studies, perceived engagement in most autonomy and purity moral violations but also the non-moral sexual and “weird” acts was predicted by lower facial morality. There was also a distinction wherein most purity violations and physical disgust were more associated with male gender, and most autonomy violations with ratings of high dominance. The scenarios also differed within categories, such as sexually impure scenarios and disgust associated with unattractive faces; while behaving “weirdly” and certain other purity violations were associated with low dominance. Taken together, our results suggest faces seemingly low on the trait labelled “morality” are perceived as more likely to engage in most immoral behaviours, but also in other socially relevant, nonmoral behaviours. Social judgements are also not homogenous within or between theory-based categories of moral violations.
... Secondly, this paper focuses primarily on local debt issuance, which is an important tool used by local bureaucrats to stimulate economic growth and is prevalent in developing nations. Previous research mainly focused on the effect of physiological traits of bureaucrats such as voice, appearance, and height on voting results [39][40][41]. Thirdly, we contribute to the literature on the ...
Facial width-to-height ratio (fWHr) has been widely proven to exert a lasting influence on shaping behavior. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence on the relationship between the fWHr level of bureaucrats and local government debt performance and attempt to discuss the demographic differences in explaining the fWHr-behavior link. We manually collected the fWHr data of local bureaucrats and used prefecture-level panel data of China from 2006 to 2015. The results show that the fWHr levels of bureaucrats are highly correlated with local government debt—bureaucrats with higher fWHr tend to issue more debt and expand the local debt substantially. Results of heterogeneity analysis suggest that the level of fWHr is gender-related—male bureaucrats tend to issue more debt. In addition, bureaucrats who have higher fWHr and who also hold higher education degrees are more inclined to issue debt. In this paper, we concentrate on the Chinese bureaucrat group and provide new micro-evidence on fWHr-related behavior from the perspective of local debt.
... Taller individuals more frequently violate personal space of shorter individuals (Caplan & Goldman, 1981), and pedestrians are more likely to yield to taller persons than to shorter ones, potentially due to higher social status of taller individuals (Stulp et al., 2015). Previous research has linked height to higher social status and dominance (Ellis, 1994;Stulp et al., 2013;Sorokowski, 2010). Accordingly, recent proxemics studies have shown that individuals prefer larger distances from taller avatars in virtual reality (Pazhoohi et al., 2019b), and reducing one's height in VR simulations increases social anxiety and paranoia (Freeman et al., 2014). ...
Objectives
Previous studies have shown that body size and height affect one’s perceived optimal distance during social interactions. This current study is built up on the previous research that found a relationship between men’s height and comfort distance but failed to find any effect of men’s shoulder-hip ratio (SHR) on one’s comfort distance. The current study investigated the combined effect of SHR and height to eliminate methodological issues that prevented from establishing an effect of SHR in the previous study.Methods
In this study, a total of 49 participants (both men and women) reported their comfort distance in relation to 63 male avatars that differed in height from 150 to 190 cm (9 values) and in SHR from 1 to 1.3 ratio (7 values).Results and Conclusion
The result of this study showed that both genders had an increment of their comfort distance as the height of the avatar increased. The effect of SHR on comfort distance was only evident with extreme SHR measurements; demonstrating that height is a better indicator of establishing comfort distance during interactions.
... For example, individuals above average in height have been found to be more likely to be chosen as leaders than those below average (Judge and Cable, 2004). Similarly, Stulp et al. (2013) identified that United States (US) Presidents who were tall were more likely to be re-elected and perceived as having greater leadership and communication skills than those with a more diminutive stature. Olson et al. (2018) found that overweight or obese individuals were frequently stereotyped as being lazy, lacking in competence and having issues in self-control, which was consistent with prior research demonstrating senior leaders at the US Army War College associated overweight appearance as indicative of poor leadership qualities (McCowen, 2003). ...
Purpose
Research has demonstrated that varying degrees and combinations of individual traits, behaviors and characteristics influence the emergence of leaders in teams. While existing models have shown that such variables affect leader choice independently and interactively, the overall findings suggest that there is still a lack of research on a potentially significant factor, the impact of personal reputation on leader selection in autonomous work teams (AWTs), an increasingly ubiquitous team practice in organizations. This preliminary review thus aims to offer a general overview of personal reputation and its effects on leader emergence in the context of AWTs.
Design/methodology/approach
By surveying extant literature on team leader emergence, this review has identified that the potential impact of personal reputation on leader selection in teams is significant yet largely ignored.
Findings
Models of leader emergence in teams should incorporate the realistic assumption that teams formed in organizations are often comprised of individuals who have information on others either directly or indirectly. Personal reputation based on an individual’s history thus moderates how one’s behaviors or traits exhibited become contextualized in the overall assessment of leader desirability and selection in teams.
Research limitations/implications
Based on a review of existing research on leadership emergence and personal reputation, this work contends that the external validity and predictive value of leader emergence models would greatly benefit from the inclusion of employee reputations as a moderating variable in the future assessment of the leader emergence process in AWTs.
Practical implications
By designing models that explain the potential effects of personal reputations on leader emergence in self-managed teams, team members and managers can be better elucidated and ultimately improve their understanding of the process of the evaluation and selection of team leaders.
Originality/value
Despite the prolific research on leader emergence, there is still a paucity of studies examining personal reputational effects on leader selection, especially in the context of AWTs. This work is the first review piece calling for the inclusion of personal reputation, a substantive factor overlooked and excluded in previous models, to enhance the current understanding of leader emergence in AWTs.
... Research questions imply what kinds of data to look for in the samples. When the kinds of data to look for are determined, then relevant coding categories can be developed more easily (Neuendorf 2002, p. 107 (Trent et al. 2013;Trent et al. 1993) and physical features (Stulp et al. 2013). ...
This research scrutinized the use of social media in the 2014 presidential election in Indonesia. In particular it analyzed their role to empower democracy due to their capacity to encourage the constituents to engage in public debates on political issues and to make informed voting decisions. Incorporating theories on mediapolis, celebrity, and intermedia agenda setting as well as employing content analysis as analytical tools, it explored the coexistence and interactions of social media, celebrity, and traditional media power in the election and how such accounts had implications on the capacity of social media to empower democracy in the country.
... Indeed, meta-analytical evidence indicates that trait dominance predicts leadership emergence (Lord et al., 1986). Likewise, morphological features reflecting physical dominance, such as height and strength, are associated with leadership and influence (Judge & Cable, 2004;Stulp et al., 2013). With regard to actual dominance behaviors, some studies found positive effects on the acquisition of power and leadership positions (e.g., Cheng et al., 2013;de Waal-Andrews et al., 2015;Halevy et al., 2012), whereas other studies did not (Driskell et al., 1993;Lukaszewski et al., 2016;Ridgeway, 1987). ...
The capacity to influence other people is key to success across domains of life, from personal to professional relationships, from the school yard to the retirement home, and from marketing to politics. Traditional approaches hold that people can gain influence in social collectives by behaving in line with prevailing norms. However, mounting evidence indicates that defying norms can enhance one's power, status, and influence. Here, I take stock of this literature and propose a new perspective that can explain seemingly inconsistent links between norm violation and influence. After discussing various social mechanisms that keep norm violators in check (negative emotions, gossip, social exclusion, formal punishment), I review evidence that violating norms can enhance the capacity for influence. I then integrate insights from the dominance/prestige framework of social rank with research on social responses to norm violations to develop a new model that illuminates when and how norm violators gain influence. I discuss implications for understanding the dynamic negotiation of leadership and influence and the maintenance versus decline of normative systems.
... Candidates who are considered to be physically attractive tend to be viewed more favorably than those seen as less attractive (Sigelman et al., 1987;Verhulst et al., 2010;Stockemer and Praino, 2015). Voters typically prefer taller, as opposed to shorter, political candidates, not only in the US (McCann, 2001;Stulp et al., 2013), but elsewhere as well (Sorokowski, 2010). Attire also impacts voter assessments of candidates (Rosenberg et al., 1991), while smiling can improve one's chances of winning an election (Horiuchi et al., 2012). 1 These studies suggest that in addition to various correlates of electoral success such as candidates' ideological positions and political experiences, voters are also influenced, whether directly or indirectly, by candidates' physical cues. ...
Politicians' voice pitch is known to affect voters' evaluation of the candidates in the US. But to what extent is this true outside of the American context? To address this question, we conducted an original survey experiment in Japan. Our findings are threefold. First, in contrast to previous studies, voters in Japan do not systematically prefer lower-pitched over higher-pitched female politicians. Second, our findings suggest heterogeneity in the effect of voice pitch by voters' gender – while Japanese women are indifferent as to female candidates' pitch levels, men are more likely to prefer female candidates who speak at lower pitch. Third, preliminary analyses reveal limited evidence that female candidates' political experience conditions the effect of voice pitch over voters' willingness to vote for that candidate. Our findings suggest that lowering pitch is likely to increase female candidates' electoral prospects by attracting male voters without backlash from female voters.
... Accordingly, many men exaggerate their height and athleticism on online dating sites to boost their chances on the mating market (Ellison et al., 2006(Ellison et al., , 2012Toma et al., 2008;Toma and Hancock, 2010;Burke and Carman, 2017). One plausible reason for men's desire to be tall, and for women's preference for men with an imposing stature and other formidability features, is the link between male stature and status (Jackson and Ervin, 1992;Buss, 2016;, which appears to be more than metaphorical, considering that we tend to "look up to" tall individuals, as evidenced from their many benefits in life (Schubert, 2005;Stulp et al., 2013). In other words, just as the "what is beautiful is good"-stereotype (Dion et al., 1972) postulates that physically attractive individuals are evaluated far more favorably even on traits and characteristics that have nothing to do with their looks, people also hold a "height halo, " in which tall people are portrayed and perceived more positively as a function of their "altitude advantage. ...
Bodily markers, often self-reported, are frequently used in research to predict a variety of outcomes. The present study examined whether men, at the aggregate level, would overestimate certain bodily markers linked to masculinity, and if so, to what extent. Furthermore, the study explored whether the amount of monetary rewards distributed to male participants would influence the obtained data quality. Men from two participant pools were asked to self-report a series of bodily measures. All self-report measures except weight were consistently found to be above the population mean (height and penis size) or the scale midpoint (athleticism). Additionally, the participant pool that received the lower (vs. higher) monetary reward showed a particularly powerful deviation from the population mean in penis size and were significantly more likely to report their erect and flaccid penis size to be larger than the claimed but not verified world record of 34 cm. These findings indicate that studies relying on men’s self-reported measures of certain body parts should be interpreted with great caution, but that higher monetary rewards seem to improve data quality slightly for such measures.
... An abundance of research has linked height with perceptions of leadership qualities such as dominance, status, and authority. 53 Not only are taller candidates more likely to win the popular vote and be reelected, 54 but members of the public view incumbents as being taller than they estimated these same people to be before they were elected. 55 Ratings of presidential greatness by experts in presidential politics correlate with presidential height, as do various ratings of leadership qualities, which suggests that this bias is pervasive. ...
In democracies, the public may assume that people elected to public office are qualified and suited for that office. However, history has demonstrated that this perception can be incorrect. One reason that unqualified individuals win elections is that voters do not always make logical or rational choices. Instead, they often rely on mental shortcuts called heuristics to make snap judgments about which candidate would do the best job. Unfortunately, these snap judgments can be inaccurate. In this article, we summarize heuristics commonly used by voters. These
heuristics are often activated by candidate attributes such as appearance, age, ethnicity, and other characteristics that are not related to leadership potential. We also propose policy solutions to reduce the chance of incompetent leaders being elected. These policy solutions address the problem through two main strategies: increasing the number of candidates who have the proper qualifications and encouraging voters to evaluate candidates more deeply and deliberately. We suggest four ways
to implement these strategies.
... Studies have shown that first impressions can lead to substantial outcomes in everyday life and in consequential situations. For example, first impressions may influence people's decisions on which candidate to vote for in presidential elections (Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst, & Pollet, 2013;Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005) and whether a suspect is declared guilty in a judicial proceeding (Porter, ten Brinke, & Gustaw, 2010). They can also influence employers' decisions about which person to hire for a job (Buijsrogge, Derous, & Duyck, 2016;Roehling, 1999) and can influence healthcare providers' caring inclination (Bagnis, Caffo, Cipolli, De Palma, Farina, & Mattarozzi, 2020;Mattarozzi, Colonnello, De Gioia, & Todorov, 2017). ...
Faces and bodies spontaneously elicit personality trait judgments (e.g., trustworthy, dominant, lazy). We examined how trait information from the face and body combine to form first impressions of the whole person and whether trait judgments from the face and body are affected by seeing the whole person. Consistent with the trait-dependence hypothesis, Experiment 1 showed that the relative contribution of the face and body to whole-person perception varied with the trait judged. Agreeableness traits (e.g., warm, aggressive, sympathetic, trustworthy) were inferred primarily from the face, conscientiousness traits (e.g., dependable, careless) from the body, and extraversion traits (e.g., dominant, quiet, confident) from the whole person. A control experiment showed that both clothing and body shape contributed to whole-person judgments. In Experiment 2, we found that a face (body) rated in the whole person elicited a different rating than when it was rated in isolation. Specifically, when trait ratings differed for an isolated face and body of the same identity, the whole-person context biased in-context ratings of the faces and bodies towards the ratings of the context. These results showed that face and body trait perception interact more than previously assumed. We combine current and established findings to propose a novel framework to account for face–body integration in trait perception. This framework incorporates basic elements such as perceptual determinants, nonperceptual determinants, trait formation, and integration, as well as predictive factors such as the rater, the person rated, and the situation.
... By contrast, for adults, their body height may influence how others perceive and treat them. For example, in the workplace, taller employees are usually considered more competent and powerful (Stulp et al., 2013), and thereby receive more attention and respect from others (Yang et al., 2017). Thus, future research could consider selecting a sample of working adults or college students to further examine whether social support mediates the relationship between height dissatisfaction (or body height) and loneliness. ...
Previous research on body dissatisfaction has mainly focused on the dissatisfaction with weight and appearance. Limited research has examined the dissatisfaction with another major body feature that is important to our social relationships and personal well-being, namely, body height. We hypothesized that height dissatisfaction would predict more intense loneliness among adolescents, and that this relationship is mediated by greater social anxiety and reduced social support. Participants of this study were 515 Chinese high school students. The Shortness subscale of the Negative Physical Self Scale, Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents, Perceived Social Support Scale, and ULS-8 were integrated into a paper-and-pencil survey. The results revealed that adolescents with high levels of height dissatisfaction reported higher levels of loneliness. A chain mediation model showed that the relationship between height dissatisfaction and loneliness could be both sequentially mediated by social anxiety and social support, and mediated by social anxiety. However, no mediating role of social support was found. We also found that body height did not predict social anxiety or social support, but can predict loneliness. The current findings provide novel insights into the occurrence of loneliness among adolescents, and indicate that negative self-perceptions of body height and the resulting social anxiety can lead to loneliness.
... These studies provide some evidence as to the abstract physiological axes of, and preferences guiding, status distinction, and some of these features (e.g. physical strength and size) correlate with increased social status in observational settings (this has, however, only been investigated in samples of men [18,80]). While these experimental examinations are often framed around relational narratives and aim to reduce complex status processes to manipulable quantities, their analytical framework generally treats status as an attribute of the individual. ...
Across species, social hierarchies are often governed by dominance relations. In humans, where there are multiple culturally valued axes of distinction, social hierarchies can take a variety of forms and need not rest on dominance relations. Consequently, humans navigate multiple domains of status, i.e. relative standing. Importantly, while these hierarchies may be constructed from dyadic interactions, they are often more fundamentally guided by subjective peer evaluations and group perceptions. Researchers have typically focused on the distinct elements that shape individuals’ relative standing, with some emphasizing individual-level attributes and others outlining emergent macro-level structural outcomes. Here, we synthesize work across the social sciences to suggest that the dynamic interplay between individual-level and meso-level properties of the social networks in which individuals are embedded are crucial for understanding the diverse processes of status differentiation across groups. More specifically, we observe that humans not only navigate multiple social hierarchies at any given time but also simultaneously operate within multiple, overlapping social networks. There are important dynamic feedbacks between social hierarchies and the characteristics of social networks, as the types of social relationships, their structural properties, and the relative position of individuals within them both influence and are influenced by status differentiation.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.
... Gender-based legitimation refers to the gender role stereotype explanation in height studies that show tallness in males is an indication of power and dominance, thus women have the tendency to prefer tall males for protection and gene selection (Duguid and Goncalo, 2011). They are also perceived to be of higher status (Stulp et al, 2013;Phillip, 2014). Five themes emerged from the study, four of which were in concordance with Yancey and Emerson's (2014) results, and they were: Society, Protection, Masculinity/Femininity and Power. ...
La altura de una persona se ha convertido en un tema de creciente interés no solo en las ciencias biológicas sino también en las ciencias sociales. La altura de los filipinos rara vez se ha estudiado, y la preferencia de altura en la pareja romántica de filipinos nunca ha sido un tema de investigación. Se recopilaron datos de 100 estudiantes de la Universidad de Filipinas utilizando cuestionarios abiertos de encuestas cualitativas. Los resultados muestran que la mayoría de las mujeres encuestadas (96%) prefieren salir con hombres más altos que ellas. La explicación de las preferencias de altura basada en el género parece más prominente que la legitimación basada en la evolución.
... Male leaders tend, on average, to be taller than followers (Lindqvist, 2012). In US presidential elections, the majority of winners are taller (Stulp et al., 2013;French, 1996, 1998). In a study of US senate races, Todorov et al. (2005) found that politicians with masculine facial features (prominent square jaw, angular face, larger nose, smaller eyes, and low forehead) won 70% of the contests. ...
We examine core assumptions of I/O and evolutionary psychology—assumptions about human nature, social and organizational systems, and methods for predicting and changing human behavior in organizations. We then review research and theory that integrates ideas from evolutionary psychology into areas of I/O psychology—including organizational design and change, leadership, decision-making, family businesses, women and work, workplace design and well-being, sustainability, and diversity. We also examine some of the possible reasons why I/O psychology (and management more broadly) have been less fertile ground for evolutionary psychology compared with other areas of psychology and the social sciences. We conclude with areas for future directions—where we see evolutionary psychology making an impact, the need for evolutionary psychology to make a greater contribution to I/O psychology, and strategies for increasing the number of scholars studying and making contributions to an evolutionary industrial and organizational psychology.
... As such, more capable individuals have a higher likelihood of enjoying greater levels of autonomy such as making their own decisions regarding tasks and working hours, factors that are more predictably associated with entrepreneurship than with wage employment (Benz & Frey, 2008;Patzelt & Shepherd, 2011). Moreover, height is positively associated with the emergence of leadership and leadership effectiveness, which are both qualities that are necessary for running one's own business (Lindqvist, 2012;Stulp et al., 2013Stulp et al., , 2015. Height is also associated with a higher level of physical power and strength, both of which are required for many types of entrepreneurship, for instance, within the field of agriculture (Sohn, 2015;Thomas & Strauss, 1997). ...
We examine the association between height and entrepreneurship in 27 nations, finding that the relationship between height and entrepreneurship can be considered to be a two-stage process. During the first stage, individuals make the decision of whether or not to try to set up their own business. At this stage, the effect of height is stronger: each 10-cm increase in height is associated with an approximately 1.4 percentage point increase in the probability of having tried to set up a business. During the second stage, after a positive decision to embark upon entrepreneurship has already been taken, people may find success in setting up their business. At this stage, although taller individuals are still more likely to experience success than their shorter counterparts, the effect of height becomes much weaker. Each 10-cm increase in height is associated with an approximately 0.4 percentage point increase in the probability of having tried to set up a business without success, and an approximately 0.4 percentage point increase in the likelihood of having set up a business in which the respondent is no longer involved, or that is no longer operational. Finally, each 10-cm increase in height is associated with an approximately 1 percentage point increase in the probability of remaining an entrepreneur. At the same time, we found that the effect of height is stronger in magnitude than the effects of gender, health and university education. This finding is remarkable insofar as gender, health and university education are usually considered to be the main determinants of entrepreneurship.
... Nevertheless, in present Western cultures, height is consistently related to income, the attainment of leadership positions, and other measures of professional success (e.g., Judge & Cable, 2004;Mueller & Mazur, 2001). As a noteworthy example, US presidents are in general taller than the average American man, and the tallest presidential candidate is most likely to win the most popular votes (Stulp et al., 2013a). Even in homogeneous occupational settings, this association is apparent: one study found that full professors were 0.47 inches taller than associate professors, who were 0.26 inches taller than assistant professors, who were 1.24 inches taller than the average nonacademic (Hensley, 1993). ...
This study among 725 male and 247 female police officers from The Netherlands examined the association between self-reported height and occupational rank from the perspective of sexual selection. Male and female police officers were taller than the average population. A larger percentage of women than of men was found in the lowest ranks, but in the leadership positions, there was a similar percentage of women as of men. Overall, but especially among women, height was linearly associated with occupational rank: the taller one was, the higher one’s rank. These effects were independent of educational level and age. The implications for evolutionary theorizing from the perspective of sexual selection on the effect of tallness on status and dominance among women are discussed.
... Height (in males) has been correlated with various social and economic characteristics. For example, Melamed and Bonzionelos (2012) show that taller men tend to be promoted more often than shorter ones, and Loh (1993) shows they tend to have higher starting salaries, whilst taller candidates tend to be more successful than shorter ones in US presidential elections (Stulp et al. 2013). However, these studies don't divide men into 'tall', 'medium' or 'short'. ...
The major problems for complex multi-dimensional social science concepts is incoherence, often hidden by the fact that they are also vague. Analytically, precisifying can demonstrate we have incompatible intuitions about the meaning of complex normative terms. Simple vague terms can be precisified with ‘coding decisions’. Vagueness differs from ambiguity. Ambiguity occurs when a term is used to mean two quite different things and can be handled by the subscript gambit. Power is neither vague nor incoherent. We can identify a simple sense underlying all accounts of ‘power’. Ambiguous usage concerns the extension to which the simple term is applied.
... More recent studies have further linked dominance with the acquisition of power and leadership in groups and organizations (e.g., Cheng et al., 2013;de Waal-Andrews et al., 2015;Halevy et al., 2012). In a related vein, morphological features indicative of physical dominance and formidability, such as height and strength, have been associated with leadership and influence (Judge & Cable, 2004;Stulp et al., 2013). However, other studies yielded no evidence for the effectiveness of dominance as a strategy for gaining influence (Driskell et al., 1993;Lukaszewski et al., 2016;Ridgeway, 1987), perhaps because people try to avoid autocratic leaders (Van Vugt et al., 2004). ...
Risk-taking can fuel innovation and growth, but it can also have devastating consequences for individuals and organizations. Here we examine whether risk-taking affords social-hierarchical benefits to risk-takers. Specifically, we investigate how risk-taking influences perceived dominance, prestige, and the willingness to endorse risk-takers' leadership. Integrating insights from costly signaling theory and the dominance/prestige framework of social rank, we theorized that risk-taking increases leadership endorsement to the degree that it fuels perceptions of prestige, but decreases leadership endorsement to the degree that it fuels perceptions of dominance. However, we also hypothesized that risk-induced perceptions of dominance do translate into leadership endorsement in competitive (rather than cooperative) intergroup settings. We tested these hypotheses in four studies involving different samples, methods, and operationalizations. In Study 1, participants performed an implicit association test (IAT) that revealed that people associate risk with leader positions, and safety with follower positions. Study 2 was a longitudinal field survey conducted during the September 2019 Israeli elections, which showed that voters' perceptions of politicians' risk-taking propensities prior to the elections positively predicted perceived dominance and prestige as well as voting behavior during the elections. Finally, Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that people are willing to support risk-takers as leaders in the context of competitive (as opposed to cooperative) intergroup situations, because perceived dominance positively predicts leadership endorsement in competitive (but not cooperative) intergroup settings. We discuss implications for understanding the social dynamics of organizational rank and the perpetuation of risky behavior in organizations, politics, and society at large. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... Interestingly height appears to predict the number of votes presidential candidates receive (Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst & Pollet, 2013), potentially explaining why many US presidents, including Trump, Obama and Kennedy measure above six foot, with Abraham Lincoln being tallest at 6ft 4 (POTUS.com: we assume they measured him without the stovepipe hat). ...
Integrating Social/Political Influence Theory with the Theory of Planned Behavior, we argue that personal resources (i.e., political skill, self‐efficacy) enable political candidates to form more ambitious campaign intentions, and thus perform better in elections. We tested this model with a sample of political candidates (N = 225) campaigning in a British general election. Three months before polling day, candidates provided self‐ratings of political skill, domain‐specific self‐efficacy (i.e., campaign efficacy), and personal campaign intentions during the campaign period. Our results demonstrated that, political skill was positively related to campaign efficacy, and intentions, via campaign efficacy. We also found a significant indirect effect for political skill on electoral performance (i.e., percentage of the vote), through campaign efficacy and intentions. Implications of our results for understanding candidate effects in campaigns and future research are discussed.
... Self-confidence plays an important role in the determination of leaders (Shamir et al., 1993) because it is a quality people favors in their leaders (Hogan et al., 1994). People are attracted to leaders that display cues of confidence such as low pitch voices (Klofstad et al., 2012;Tigue et al., 2012) and high height (Blaker et al., 2013;Stulp et al., 2013) and can recognize leaders by their facial features with above-chance accuracy (Todorov et al., 2015). In turn, confident leaders are perceived as more knowledgeable (Price and Stone, 2004) as well as more trustworthy (Penrod and Cutler, 1995), and exert greater influence (Van Swol and Sniezek, 2005). ...
Standard economic models assume that individuals collect and process information in a way that gives them a relatively accurate perception of reality. However, this assumption is often violated. Data shows that individuals often form positively biased beliefs about themselves, which can have detrimental economic con-sequences. This thesis aims to explain the persistence of overconfidence in social interactions by showing the existence of strategic benefits of being overconfident that offset its social cost.Using a series of laboratory experiments, this thesis shows that (i) overconfidence emerges primarily when it provides an advantage in social interactions (Chapter2) and (ii) identify situations in which overconfidence is likely to be socially detrimental (Chapter 3 and 4). This thesis contributes to the literature by enhancing our understanding of the situational determinants of overconfidence in social interactions and lay the foundations to improve policies intended to prevent or limit its negative effects
... Still, the union of these representations may not be entirely groundless. Some physical features like height are positively associated with professional success and income (Judge and Cable 2004), and tallness is surprisingly common to some powerful positions like the US presidency (Stulp et al. 2012). However, people's expectations about the predictive value of these cues may substantially outweigh their actual utility (Carney 2020;Hall et al. 2005). ...
Objective:
Adults’ mental representations of the physical appearance of people that are “strong” and people that are “in charge” are remarkably similar. Some have explained this feature of adults’ thinking by positing innate mental representations. However, specific details about the nature and structure of these representations, and an appropriate empirical foundation for these claims has been lacking. In this review, my objective is to provide a high-level summary of recent research exploring infants’ and young children’s intuitions about the physical manifestations of power. I argue that the social responses and judgments of these young participants are more informative about the existence and nature of putatively innate mental content.
Methods:
Narrative review of developmental studies.ResultsPreverbal infants exhibit a remarkably early sensitivity to the relative power of two agents. By early childhood, children exhibit increasingly adult-like intuitions about powerful appearance. However, there are significant revisions in the appearance-to-power correspondences that people detect between childhood and adulthood.
Conclusions:
These complex developmental patterns are inconsistent with the idea that adults’ intuitions about the physical manifestations of power are straightforward outputs of an innate psychology. Rather, despite an early-emerging sensitivity to appearance-based cues to power, significant conceptual development and change precede adults’ judgments about powerful appearance.
... Consequently, taller men are more likely to hold positions of power, authority, and social status [13,14], a trend that has been observed cross-culturally [2]. Most notably, taller presidential candidates receive more popular votes and are more likely to be re-elected than their shorter opponents [15]. Indeed, nonverbal cues that increase perceived status may do so by increasing the apparent size of the individual displaying them [16]. ...
Background:
Male height is positively associated with social dominance, and more agonistic/competitive behaviours. However, the 'Napoleon complex' or 'small man syndrome' suggests that smaller males are more assertive and punitive to compensate for lack of height and social dominance. Here, we assess possible relationships between height and punitive behaviours in a real-world setting.
Methods:
Using a non-experimental correlational design, we analysed data on 61 male association football referees from four professional leagues in England, and explored relationships between their height and punitive behaviours in the form of yellow cards, red cards and penalties given during an entire season.
Results:
Overall there was no effect of referee height on fouls awarded. However, there was a main effect of height on yellow cards awarded, with shorter referees issuing more yellow cards. The same effect was found for red cards and penalties, though this was moderated by league. In the lower leagues, more red cards and penalties were awarded by relatively shorter referees, but in the higher leagues more red cards and penalties were awarded by relatively taller referees.
Conclusions:
These findings from real-life public dominance encounters show that height is associated with punitive behaviours, but is sensitive to context.
... The second external factor as a contingency factor is political issues. Political studies cited ten times in the LQ articles discuss on characteristics (Ellen, Ferris & Buckley, 2013) and physical traits (Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst & Pollet, 2013;Yammarino, Mumford, Serban & Shirreffs, 2013) of political leaders (especially US presidents) and explore how these traits affect the election and voting processes. The last external factor cited four times in the articles is culture. ...
There is a growing body of theoretical and practical studies conducted on a variety of subjects under the multifaceted leadership concept. In this chapter, the authors first explain recently discussed concepts in the Leadership Quarterly by category (leader, contingency, outcome, and leadership development) and subcategory (traits; leader-subordinate interaction, leadership style, organizational; leader, followers, organizational), explore current leadership trends at practice by analyzing Harvard Business Review articles, and then compare them. The essential objective of this chapter is to explore the current trends emerging from real business life in comparison to theoretical development in the leadership field and to highlight common concepts coming from the theory and practice of leadership. From this aspect, this chapter may provide a basis for comparative leadership studies and contribute to the related literature and practical studies. The strength of this study is to present a comparison between current theoretical and practical leadership trends by conducting a content analysis.
... This aspect is crucial as it also refers to the entanglement of a set of confounders: is height important because it is a good predictor of health and intelligence (absolute value) or is it important for selecting the individuals who are taller than their peers and therefore perceived as more dominant (relative value)? Previous studies indicate that this relative measure can be of great relevance and deserves more attention from researchers (Stulp et al., 2013). ...
To better explicate the well-researched finding that taller individuals have higher wages on average, potential mechanisms should be studied in detail. The present analysis investigates the relationship between height and the probability of being in a leadership position in the workplace using multinational European Social Survey data from 19 countries. Studying full-time, employed individuals between 20 and 55 years of age reveals considerable country differences which is beneficial for the estimated multilevel models as variation is increased.
The results indicate a statistically significant effect whereby women are 0.15 percentage points more likely to be in a leadership position for each additional centimetre of absolute height when controlling for education and occupational position whereas there is no effect for men.
In order to study the relevance of absolute vs relative height, which is the difference to the local peer-group, regional data is utilized. The main findings are that there is no effect of relative height for men but a statistically significant effect for women. For them, absolute and relative effects are about equally strong.
... Likewise, taller individuals may enjoy higher levels of life satisfaction since they are perceived, by society-at-large as being more attractive due to their height (Becker, 1971;Salahodjaev & Ibragimova, 2018;Stulp et al., 2015). For instance, after studying US presidential candidates, Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst, and Pollet (2013) concluded that taller candidates received more votes and were more likely to win elections. Taller individuals may also enjoy higher levels of life satisfaction insofar as people may perceive them as being more powerful and productive, especially when actual productivity is not predictable, and taller individuals have one of the more easily observable features (height) as an indicator of productivity (Arrow, 1973;Mavisakalyan, 2018). ...
Objectives:
To evaluate the effect of height on life satisfaction.
Methods:
We use data from a recent multi-country survey that was conducted in 27 nations.
Results:
Our main finding is that height does have a strong positive effect on life satisfaction. These findings remain positive and significant when we use a comprehensive set of well-known covariates of life-satisfaction at both the individual and country levels. These findings also remain robust to alternative statistical specifications.
Conclusions:
From a theoretical standpoint, our findings suggest that height is important in explaining life-satisfaction independent of other well-known determinants. From a methodological standpoint, the findings of this study highlight the need to explicitly control for the effect of heights in studies on subjective well-being, happiness, and life-satisfaction.
... As one example, body height was found to predict important life outcomes such as economic success both in men and women in such diverse cultures as Germany (Hübler, 2009) and Indonesia (Sohn, 2015). Stulp et al. (2013b) analyzed body height in presidents of the United ...
Social attention is a ubiquitous, but also enigmatic and sometimes elusive phenomenon. We direct our gaze at other human beings to see what they are doing and to guess their intentions, but we may also absorb social events en passant as they unfold in the corner of the eye. We use our gaze as a discrete communication channel, sometimes conveying pieces of information which would be difficult to explicate, but we may also find ourselves avoiding eye-contact with others in moments when self-disclosure is fear-laden. We experience our gaze as the most genuine expression of our will, but research also suggests considerable levels of predictability and automaticity in our gaze behavior. The phenomenon’s complexity has hindered researchers from developing a unified framework which can conclusively accommodate all of its aspects, or from even agreeing on the most promising research methodologies. The present work follows a multi-methods approach, taking on several aspects of the phenomenon from various directions. Participants in study 1 viewed dynamic social scenes on a computer screen. Here, low-level physical saliency (i.e. color, contrast, or motion) and human heads both attracted gaze to a similar extent, providing a comparison of two vastly different classes of gaze predictors in direct juxtaposition. In study 2, participants with varying degrees of social anxiety walked in a public train station while their eye movements were tracked. With increasing levels of social anxiety, participants showed a relative avoidance of gaze at near compared to distant people. When replicating the experiment in a laboratory situation with a matched participant group, social anxiety did not modulate gaze behavior, fueling the debate around appropriate experimental designs in the field. Study 3 employed virtual reality (VR) to investigate social gaze in a complex and immersive, but still highly controlled situation. In this situation, participants exhibited a gaze behavior which may be more typical for real-life compared to laboratory situations as they avoided gaze contact with a virtual conspecific unless she gazed at them. This study provided important insights into gaze behavior in virtual social situations, helping to better estimate the possible benefits of this new research approach. Throughout all three experiments, participants showed consistent inter-individual differences in their gaze behavior. However, the present work could not resolve if these differences are linked to psychologically meaningful traits or if they instead have an epiphenomenal character.
... Ako se odnos vođa-sljedbenik uspostavlja po načelima koja su bila bitna našim precima iz pleistocena, može se očekivati da neki aspekti tog odnosa predstavljaju nesklad s modernim okruženjem te je moguće da i danas biramo vođe na temelju fizičkih i psihičkih karakteristika koji su nekada signalizirali uspješno vodstvo (Van Vugt i sur., 2008). U modernom svijetu, posao vođe uglavnom ne zahtijeva fizički kompetentnije pojedince, stoga bi hipoteza nesklada mogla objasniti neke osobine vođa u modernom vremenu, poput toga da ljudi preferiraju snažne (Sell, Tooby i Cosmides, 2009) i visoke muškarce (Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst i Pollet, 2013) za svoje vođe. ...
Vodstvo je sveprisutno u organizaciji života ljudskih grupa. Istraživanje vođa i vodstva bilo je u središtu interesa raznih društvenih znanosti poput psihologije, eko-nomije ili politologije. Dosadašnja literatura iz spomenutih područja uglavnom se bavi opisivanjem kako vodstvo funkcionira i primarno je usmjerena na vođe. U novije vrije-me, pojavljuje se interes za primjenu principa evolucijske psihologije u ovom području te se neki istraživači usmjeravaju na pitanje kako je vodstvo nastalo. Pri tome, važan naglasak se stavlja na adaptivnu vrijednost vodstva od kojega korist imaju svi članovi grupe te u samim teorijskim postavkama bitnu ulogu zauzimaju i sljedbenici vođa, koji u društvu čine većinu. Smatra se da je uspostavljanje odnosa vođa-sljedbenik adaptacija nastala tijekom evolucijske prošlosti koja je bila usmjerena na rješavanje problema koordinacije grupnih zadataka. U ovom preglednom članku prikazat će se tri skupine istraživanja koja idu u prilog navedenim pretpostavkama. Prvo, prikazat će se različiti oblici vodstva i organizacije životinjskih grupa, od insekata do primata. Drugo, opisat će se antropološka istraživanja na plemenima lovaca-sakupljača, čiji je životni stil najsličniji onomu koji su vodili ljudski preci tijekom evolucijske prošlo-sti. Zatim, prikazat će se niz istraživanja na modernim ljudima, a koja pokazuju da u ljudskim grupama postoji pristranost prema osobinama vođa koje su vjerojatno našim precima signalizirale dobro vodstvo, a koje nisu u skladu s modernim uvjetima života.
... Empirical evidence from psychology and political science confirms this prediction. Trait impressions are influenced by physical attributes of leaders, such as their formidability (Murray, 2014;Stulp, Buunk, Verhulst, & Pollet, 2013), race (Livingston & Pearce, 2009;Moskowitz & Stroh, 1994), gender (Cassese & Holman, 2017;Huddy & Terkildsen, 1993;Winter, 2010) and facial appearance (Laustsen & Petersen, 2016;Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005;Van Vugt & Grabo, 2015). They are also updated based on the views that politicians express, such as leftist views yielding better warmth ratings, whereas rightist views increase perceived competence (Bittner, 2011;Laustsen, 2017;Rapoport, Metcalf, & Hartman, 1989). ...
Leaders’ persona and the state of the economy are among the two most salient topics during election campaigns. Existing scholarship treats these as two independent or even competing factors. Economic perceptions are overlooked as cues for leader evaluations, while leader evaluations rarely enter considerations of the economic vote. This article builds on evolutionary leadership theory to bridge these distant literatures. It proposes that evaluating leaders’ performance based on the resources available to group members may have improved followers’ fitness ancestrally. Accordingly, it predicts that the effect of economic perceptions on vote choice is mediated by leaders’ warmth and competence impressions in modern democracies. To test these predictions, the article first analyzes representative survey data from seventeen elections in three countries (USA, Australia and Denmark). Second, it relies on two original, well-powered manipulation-of-process experiments to test the validity of the causal claims.
... Tall men experience many advantages in their lives, and high stature is associated with a very positive social perception. For example, tall men are more likely to win political elections (McCann 2001), since they are considered to communicate better and to have more leadership skills than shorter candidates (Persico et al. 2004;Stulp et al. 2013). What is more, height of capable leaders is estimated as greater than stature of those who do not perform well in the position of power (Sorokowski et al. 2014). ...
The stereotype of a tall man has been reported in numerous studies. High stature is commonly associated with advantages such as leadership skills, wealth, intelligence or social status, and actual differences between the short and the tall men were indeed found for these traits, mainly in favor of the tall men. It is not certain, however, whether the height-related effects are biologically determined or if they result from socially-driven mechanisms. In this study we wanted to explore whether congenitally blind individuals, who are unable to perceive other people’s stature through the most salient, visual channel, share the positive, height-related stereotype. Thirty-four congenitally blind and forty-three sighted men and women rated four positive characteristics of a tall or a short man. It was found that none of the traits assigned to the tall man by the sighted people was assigned to this person by the blind individuals. In the congenitally blind group, no differences between the assessments of the tall and the short man were revealed. We discuss our findings in the context of social perception and stereotypes research.
... In addition, taller individuals report higher levels of life satisfaction because they are viewed to be more dominant and productive within society (Blaker et al. 2013). Assessing data from all previous presidential elections, Stulp et al. (2013) found that Bcandidates that were taller than their opponents received more popular votes … [and were] also more likely to be re-elected^(p.159). ...
Over the past decade there has been growing interest in the determinants of life satisfaction. Within this literature, a new strand has emerged that investigates the link between appearance and subjective wellbeing. This paper contributes to this avenue of research by exploring the association between height and life satisfaction in Russia. Data for this study was taken from the RLMS, a series of nationally representative surveys designed to monitor the effects of Russian reforms on the health and economic welfare of households and individuals in the Russian Federation. Our sample covering more than 90,000 observations shows that there is inverted U-shaped association between height and life satisfaction. Controlling for potential antecedents of life satisfaction, we found that the turning point for height was around 177 cm.
Purpose of review
Use of recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) treatment to increase height in children with non-growth hormone deficient short stature is becoming more common. Yet, the evidence to support the notion that augmenting height directly leads to increased well being, specifically psychosocial well being, is inconsistent, with high-quality evidence lacking.
Recent findings
Review of recent studies demonstrates that the association between height augmentation and psychosocial well being is complex. The direct contribution of height to well being may be less than the current model of clinical care of short stature assumes. Rather, the new studies provide evidence to support a role for psychosocial factors, including height-related beliefs, social support, and coping skills, in promoting psychosocial well being, specifically quality of life and self-esteem.
Summary
Clinical care of short stature would benefit from incorporating a holistic model of care that considers psychosocial interventions in addition to, or instead of, rhGH treatment.
Leadership is defined as “a process whereby intentional influence is exerted over other people to guide, structure, and facilitate activities and relationships in a group or organization” (Yukl GA, Leadership in organizations. Pearson, p. 2, 2013). As “[l]eading people effectively is a tremendous challenge, a great opportunity, and a serious responsibility” (Nahavandi A, The art and science of leadership. Pearson, p. xv, 2006), leadership is one of the most heavily researched phenomena in social sciences. Over the years, the leadership field has evolved with incorporating a range of concepts and theories from different disciplines (e.g., psychology, sociology, anthropology, organizational and political sciences), painting a clearer picture of the leadership paradigms and allowing us to explain the antecedents, outcomes, circumstances, and mechanisms of leadership. This chapter will provide a thorough overview of leadership theories and research. Specifically, this chapter begins by introducing early leadership theories (the trait, behavioral, and contingency approach to leadership). The chapter then turns to reviewing existing research on new leadership models (LMX, transformational leadership, ethical leadership, shared leadership, and abusive supervision), followed by a discussion of gender and cultural differences in existing leadership research. Finally, this chapter provides a brief overview of power, influence tactics, and organizational politics.KeywordsTrait approachBehavior approachSituational contingencyLeader-member exchange (LMX)Transformational leadershipEthical leadershipShared leadershipAbusive supervisionGenderCross-culturePowerInfluencePolitics
Democracy was forged in the furnaces of oppression, whether combatting tyranny or affirming the rights of the individual. As democracy is under threat in many parts of the world, there has never been a more urgent need to understand political thoughts and behaviours. This lucid and accessible book brings together a global group of scholars from psychology, political science, communication, sociology, education and psychiatry. The book's structure, based on Abraham Lincoln's well-known phrase 'Of, by and for' the people, scrutinises the psychological factors experienced by politicians as representatives 'of' the electorate, the political institutions and systems devised 'by' those we elect, and the societies that influence the context 'for' us as citizens. From trust to risk, from political values to moral and religious priorities, from the personality and language of leaders to fake news and anti-democratic forces, this book provides vital new insights for researchers, politicians and citizens alike.
Democracy was forged in the furnaces of oppression, whether combatting tyranny or affirming the rights of the individual. As democracy is under threat in many parts of the world, there has never been a more urgent need to understand political thoughts and behaviours. This lucid and accessible book brings together a global group of scholars from psychology, political science, communication, sociology, education and psychiatry. The book's structure, based on Abraham Lincoln's well-known phrase 'Of, by and for' the people, scrutinises the psychological factors experienced by politicians as representatives 'of' the electorate, the political institutions and systems devised 'by' those we elect, and the societies that influence the context 'for' us as citizens. From trust to risk, from political values to moral and religious priorities, from the personality and language of leaders to fake news and anti-democratic forces, this book provides vital new insights for researchers, politicians and citizens alike.
Background There is a recurring and seamless interaction between the biology of human development and the social-economic-political emotional (SEPE) environment. The SEPE environment influences the quality of the material conditions for human biology and, simultaneously, human growth in height and other dimensions provide social and moral signals that provide information to community networks. Objectives This article reviews the role of SEPE factors in human growth, especially skeletal growth. Sample and Methods The meaning of SEPE is defined and shown to be related to individual and group prestige, to social identity, and to ego and task motivation. These influence dominance or subordination of communities and the material and moral conditions of societies. Historical and contemporary examples of SEPE effects on skeletal size are presented. Results Membership in a SEPE community impacts skeletal size in height and breadth. Higher SEPE classes are taller, lower SEPE classes are broader. In elite level sport the winners have more growth stimulation via the hormone IGF-1 even before the contest. These findings are explained in terms of dominance versus subordination and the Community Effect in Height hypothesis. Conclusions SEPE factor regulation of human growth is shown to be a more comprehensive explanation for plasticity in height than traditional concepts such as socioeconomic status and simple-minded genetic determinism. People belonging to upper SEPE class communities , the elites, know that they are superior and are treated as such by the non-elites. The material and moral condition for life operating through these community social networks provide positive stimulation for the elites and negative stimulation for the lower SEPE classes. These differences maintain the gradients in height between SEPE communities in human societies.
Erfolg in der Führung ist nach dem aktuellen Stand der Forschung das Ergebnis eines komplexen Zusammenspiels von Eigenschaften, Einstellungen und Fähigkeiten der Führungskraft, ihrem Verhalten gegenüber den Geführten, deren Einstellungen und Fähigkeiten, sowie dem Kontext, der sich vor allem aus Merkmalen der Organisation und der Aufgabenstellungen ergibt. Das macht die Suche nach der idealen Führungskraft zu einer entsprechend schwierigen Aufgabe. Gefragt sind deshalb einfache Suchkriterien zur Eingrenzung des Kandidatenkreises, und es scheint, als wäre selbst die Körpergrösse hierzu ein untrügliches Merkmal. Daten aus den Haushaltsbefragungen der öffentlichen Statistik in Deutschland und der Schweiz legen diesen Schluss nahe: Führungskräfte
berragen Angestellte ohne Führungsposition im Durchschnitt um mehr als einen Zentimeter. Das gilt vor allem für Männer, teilweise aber auch für Frauen.
Examined the influence of sex, gender role characteristics, and interpersonal attractiveness on the selection of emergent leaders. Data were collected on 2 occasions from 122 subjects in 28 task groups performing “sex neutral” tasks for valued rewards over many weeks of interaction. Results showed no significant difference in the proportion of men and women to emerge as leaders through intragroup sociometric choice. Regardless of sex, group members with masculine gender role characteristics emerged as leaders significantly more than those with feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated gender role characteristics. Emergent leaders received significantly higher interpersonal attractiveness ratings than nonleaders within groups.
This study examined the relationship between physical height and managerial promotion among 132 British managers from the civil services. The data were analyzed independently for 61 men and 71 women. Analysis suggested that rate of promotion was positively correlated with height. These coefficients were not reduced when the effect of personality profile associated with height was removed
Research suggests that tall individuals have an advantage over short individuals in terms of status, prestige, and leadership, though it is not clear why. Applying an evolutionary psychology perspective, we predicted that taller individuals are seen as more leader-like because they are perceived as more dominant, healthy, and intelligent. Being fit and physically imposing were arguably important leadership qualities in ancestral human environments—perhaps especially for males—where being a leader entailed considerable physical risks. In line with our expectations, our results demonstrate that by manipulating an individual’s stature height positively influences leadership perception for both men and women, though the effect is stronger for men. For male leaders this height leadership advantage is mediated by their perceived dominance, health, and intelligence; while for female leaders this effect is only mediated by perceived intelligence.
Formulas to predict presidential greatness on the Maranell index were constructed for 29 presidents from G. Washington to L. Johnson. When a zeitgeist variable, derived from the historian A. M. Schlesinger, Jr's (1986) work on the public purpose–private interest cycle of American political history, served as the initial predictor and stepwise selection was made from a personological pool and then from a situational pool, a 6-variable formula containing 5 personological variables accounted for 91% of the greatness variance. With free stepwise regression, years served and 6 personological predictors accounted for 94% of the greatness variance. Contrary to D. K. Simonton's (1987) attributional interpretation, a dispositional basis for presidential greatness may exist. The results also suggest that public purpose phases bring forth presidents who exhibit the personological characteristics most related to historians' acclaim for presidential leadership. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Investigated the relationship between perceived status in politics and judged physical stature. 177 Ss were interviewed. Comparison of estimated heights of Canadian federal party leaders before and after the 1988 federal election indicated that the losers, Broadbent and Turner, were judged to be shorter afterwards, while the winner, Mulroney, was judged taller. Although the relationship between status and judged height has previously been demonstrated, this result indicates that it is dynamic (i.e., election outcomes alter rated tallness). A gender effect also was noted. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Throughout the animal kingdom, larger males are more likely to attain social dominance. Several lines of evidence suggest that this relationship extends to humans, as height is positively related to dominance, status and authority. We hypothesized that height is also a determinant of authority in professional refereeing. According to the International Football Association Board, FIFA, football ("soccer") referees have full authority to enforce the laws of the game and should use their body language to show authority and to help control the match. We show that height is indeed positively related to authority status: referees were taller than their assistants (who merely have an advisory role) in both a national (French League) and an international (World Cup 2010) tournament. Furthermore, using data from the German League, we found that height was positively associated with authoritative behavior. Taller referees were better able to maintain control of the game by giving fewer fouls, thereby increasing the "flow of the game". Referee height was also positively associated with perceived referee competence, as taller referees were assigned to matches in which the visiting team had a higher ranking. Thus, height appears to be positively related to authority in professional refereeing.
A small number of previous studies using convenience samples from outside Canada, and mostly for males, show positive relationships
between physical height and holding a position of authority as a manager or supervisor. The present study employs Multiple
Classification Analysis to assess the generality of these patterns to a representative sample of full-time Canadian workers
(2,210 males and 1,815 females) using seven alternative measures of authority status. The results for male workers, after
controls, generally show significant positive relationships between height and authority status. The controlled analyses for
female workers, however, do not. Additional analyses for males show height to be a comparatively strong predictor relative
to other social background predictors of authority status. Alternative interpretations of the patterns of findings are discussed.
Human male height is associated with mate choice and intra-sexual competition, and therefore potentially with reproductive success. A literature review (n = 18) on the relationship between male height and reproductive success revealed a variety of relationships ranging from negative to curvilinear to positive. Some of the variation in results may stem from methodological issues, such as low power, including men in the sample who have not yet ended their reproductive career, or not controlling for important potential confounders (e.g. education and income). We investigated the associations between height, education, income and the number of surviving children in a large longitudinal sample of men (n = 3,578; Wisconsin Longitudinal Study), who likely had ended their reproductive careers (e.g. > 64 years). There was a curvilinear association between height and number of children, with men of average height attaining the highest reproductive success. This curvilinear relationship remained after controlling for education and income, which were associated with both reproductive success and height. Average height men also married at a younger age than shorter and taller men, and the effect of height diminished after controlling for this association. Thus, average height men partly achieved higher reproductive success by marrying at a younger age. On the basis of our literature review and our data, we conclude that men of average height most likely have higher reproductive success than either short or tall men.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00265-011-1283-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Male dominance rank, physical strength, indices of reproductive success, and indices of reproductive potential are correlated with masculine characteristics in many animal species, including humans. Accordingly, men generally perceive masculinized versions of men’s faces and voices to be more dominant than feminized versions. Less dominant men incur greater costs when they incorrectly perceive the dominance of rivals. Consequently, it may be adaptive for less dominant men to be particularly sensitive to cues of dominance in other men. Since height is a reliable index of men’s dominance, we investigated the relationship between own height and men’s sensitivity to masculine characteristics when judging the dominance of other men’s faces and voices. Although men generally perceived masculinized faces and voices to be more dominant than feminized versions, this effect of masculinity on dominance perceptions was significantly greater among shorter men than among taller men. These findings suggest that differences among men in the potential costs of incorrectly perceiving the dominance of rivals have shaped systematic variation in men’s perceptions of the dominance of potential rivals.
Many quadrupedal species stand bipedally on their hindlimbs to fight. This posture may provide a performance advantage by allowing the forelimbs to strike an opponent with the range of motion that is intrinsic to high-speed running, jumping, rapid braking and turning; the range of motion over which peak force and power can be produced.
To test the hypothesis that bipedal (i.e., orthograde) posture provides a performance advantage when striking with the forelimbs, I measured the force and energy produced when human subjects struck from "quadrupedal" (i.e., pronograde) and bipedal postures. Downward and upward directed striking energy was measured with a custom designed pendulum transducer. Side and forward strikes were measured with a punching bag instrumented with an accelerometer. When subjects struck downward from a bipedal posture the work was 43.70±12.59% (mean ± S.E.) greater than when they struck from a quadrupedal posture. Similarly, 47.49±17.95% more work was produced when subjects struck upward from a bipedal stance compared to a quadrupedal stance. Importantly, subjects did 229.69±44.19% more work in downward than upward directed strikes. During side and forward strikes the force impulses were 30.12±3.68 and 43.04±9.00% greater from a bipedal posture than a quadrupedal posture, respectively.
These results indicate that bipedal posture does provide a performance advantage for striking with the forelimbs. The mating systems of great apes are characterized by intense male-male competition in which conflict is resolved through force or the threat of force. Great apes often fight from bipedal posture, striking with both the fore- and hindlimbs. These observations, plus the findings of this study, suggest that sexual selection contributed to the evolution of habitual bipedalism in hominins.
Human infants face the formidable challenge of learning the structure of their social environment. Previous research indicates that infants have early-developing representations of intentional agents, and of cooperative social interactions, that help meet that challenge. Here we report five studies with 144 infant participants showing that 10- to 13-month-old, but not 8-month-old, infants recognize when two novel agents have conflicting goals, and that they use the agents' relative size to predict the outcome of the very first dominance contests between them. These results suggest that preverbal infants mentally represent social dominance and use a cue that covaries with it phylogenetically, and marks it metaphorically across human cultures and languages, to predict which of two agents is likely to prevail in a conflict of goals.
Assortative mating for human height has long attracted interest in evolutionary biology, and the phenomenon has been demonstrated in numerous human populations. It is often argued that mating preferences generate this pattern, but other processes can also induce trait correlations between mates. Here, we present a methodology tailored to quantify continuous preferences based on choice experiments between pairs of stimuli. In particular, it is possible to explore determinants of interindividual variations in preferences, such as the height of the chooser. We collected data from a sample of 200 individuals from France. Measurements obtained show that the perception of attractiveness depends on both the height of the stimuli and the stature of the individual who judged them. Therefore, this study demonstrates that homogamy is present at the level of preferences for both sexes. We also show that measurements of the function describing this homogamy are concordant with several distinct mating rules proposed in the literature. In addition, the quantitative approach introduced here fulfills metrics that can be used to compare groups of individuals. In particular, our results reveal an important disagreement between sexes regarding height preferences in the context of mutual mate choice. Finally, both women and men prefer individuals who are significantly taller than average. All major findings are confirmed by a reanalysis of previously published data.
Social dominance and physical size are closely linked. Nonverbal dominance displays in many non-human species are known to increase the displayer's apparent size. Humans also employ a variety of nonverbal cues that increase apparent status, but it is not yet known whether these cues function via a similar mechanism: by increasing the displayer's apparent size.
We generated stimuli in which actors displayed high status, neutral, or low status cues that were drawn from the findings of a recent meta-analysis. We then conducted four studies that indicated that nonverbal cues that increase apparent status do so by increasing the perceived size of the displayer. Experiment 1 demonstrated that nonverbal status cues affect perceivers' judgments of physical size. The results of Experiment 2 showed that altering simple perceptual cues can affect judgments of both size and perceived status. Experiment 3 used objective measurements to demonstrate that status cues change targets' apparent size in the two-dimensional plane visible to a perceiver, and Experiment 4 showed that changes in perceived size mediate changes in perceived status, and that the cue most associated with this phenomenon is postural openness.
We conclude that nonverbal cues associated with social dominance also affect the perceived size of the displayer. This suggests that certain nonverbal dominance cues in humans may function as they do in other species: by creating the appearance of changes in physical size.
Selection in species with aggressive social interactions favours the evolution of cognitive mechanisms for assessing physical formidability (fighting ability or resource-holding potential). The ability to accurately assess formidability in conspecifics has been documented in a number of non-human species, but has not been demonstrated in humans. Here, we report tests supporting the hypothesis that the human cognitive architecture includes mechanisms that assess fighting ability-mechanisms that focus on correlates of upper-body strength. Across diverse samples of targets that included US college students, Bolivian horticulturalists and Andean pastoralists, subjects in the US were able to accurately estimate the physical strength of male targets from photos of their bodies and faces. Hierarchical linear modelling shows that subjects were extracting cues of strength that were largely independent of height, weight and age, and that corresponded most strongly to objective measures of upper-body strength-even when the face was all that was available for inspection. Estimates of women's strength were less accurate, but still significant. These studies are the first empirical demonstration that, for humans, judgements of strength and judgements of fighting ability not only track each other, but accurately track actual upper-body strength.
The 4 “great” U.S. Presidents, as listed in the 1982 Murray-Blessing Poll, were significantly taller (M = 74.63 in.) than the 5 considered “failures” (M = 70.80 in.), consistent with previous research on height and status.
Based on the idea that height serves as a heuristic for judgments about status, dominance, and leadership potential, two hypotheses were tested: (1) Heights of U.S. presidential election winners are positively correlated with estimates of social, economic, and political threat in election years. (2) Height and victory margin are positively correlated regardless of the magnitude of estimates of social, economic, and political threat in election years. Both hypotheses were supported for the 43 elections from 1824 to 1992.
To demonstrate certain concepts and principles of social psychology, eight classroom exercises, each in the form of a small-scale experiment or correlational study, are described. Four of the demonstrations are presented in detail, with supporting data from an introductory social psychology course, and four others are described briefly. The concepts demonstrated include gestalt, nonverbal communication, adaptation level, relative deprivation, selective exposure, labeling, sexism, and perceptual distortion. Each demonstration involves a brief questionnaire which is easily prepared, administered, and analyzed, and the results of each appear to be robust enough to replicate with small samples. The advantages of the general technique are also mentioned.
We use new data on entries and exits of US daily newspapers from 1869 to 2004 to estimate effects on political participation, party vote shares, and electoral competitiveness. Our identification strategy exploits the precise timing of these events and allows for the possibility of confounding trends. We focus our analysis on the years 18691928, and we use the remaining years of data to look at changes over time. We find that newspapers have a robust positive effect on political participation, with one additional newspaper increasing both presidential and congressional turnout by approximately 0.3 percentage points. Newspaper competition is not a key driver of turnout: our effect is driven mainly by the first newspaper in a market, and the effect of a second or third paper is significantly smaller. The effect on presidential turnout diminishes after the introduction of radio and television, while the estimated effect on congressional turnout remains similar up to recent years. We find no evidence that partisan newspapers affect party vote shares, with confidence intervals that rule out even moderate-sized effects. We find no clear evidence that newspapers systematically help or hurt incumbents.
This research examines height stereotypes of women and men in the United States using two methods of stereotype assessment, the trait ratings method and the percentage estimates method. Subjects rated female or male targets who were tall, of average height, or short on seven evaluative dimensions; social attractiveness, professional status, p0ersonal adjustment, athletic orientation, masculinity, femininity, and physical attractiveness. Findings indicated that height stereotypes of men encompassed six of the seven dimensions and suggested that shortness is more of a liability than tallness is an asset. Height stereotypes of women encompassed only two dimensions and again suggested the liabilities of shortness. Stronger stereotypes were obtained with the trait ratings method than with the percentage estimates method, although no differences in the content of the stereotypes were observed. Implications for future research on height effects on person perception and for the interchangeability of different methods of stereotype assessment are discussed.
This cross-cultural study utilized the full range leadership framework developed by Bass and Avolio and Hofstede's model of culture, and compared leadership styles and cultural values of over 4,000 managerial and non-managerial employees in ten business organizations in Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Germany, and the US. Regarding socio-cultural dimensions, the study found that, compared to Germany and the US, the four former USSR countries differed primarily by much lower levels of Power Distance, higher levels of Masculinity and much longer planning horizons. The results on leadership indicate that two dimensions - Contingent Reward and Inspirational Motivation - produced the highest scores in all four countries of the former USSR. Two less efficient leadership styles, Laissez-faire and Management by Exception, have received significantly higher scores in the four former USSR countries, than in the US and Germany. Finally, the study suggests that cross-cultural human resource development issues cannot be described in terms of simplified dichotomies between the East and West. For constructs measured in this study, significant differences were found not only between the two groups of countries but also between individual countries within these groups.
This study examined the relationship between physical height and managerial promotion among 132 British managers from the civil services. The data were analyzed independently for 61 men and 71 women. Analysis suggested that rate of promotion was positively correlated with height. These coefficients were not reduced when the effect of personality profile associated with height was removed.
This study examines the relationships of exposure and attention to various news media, including the Internet, with information learned about the issue positions of candidates George Bush and John Kerry, interest in the 2004 election campaign, and intention to vote among a random sample of adult residents of Indiana who were interviewed by telephone in October 2004. The results are compared with our previous studies of the 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000 U.S. presidential elections. In general, our studies suggest that attention to television news, televised debates, and now Internet news are important predictors, or at least correlates, of voter learning of candidate issue positions and voter interest in the election campaigns. These findings contradict the hypothesis that increased news media use leads to increased voter apathy and alienation from the political process.
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Following evolutionary psychology, we argue that physical stature matters in preferences regarding political leadership. Particularly, a preference for physically formidable leaders evolved to promote survivability in the violent human ancestral history.
We present two studies of original data to assess individual attitudes regarding the association between physical stature and political leadership. Analytical methods include ordered probit regression.
The findings are consistent with the evolutionary theory presented here. Study 1 indicates that individuals tend to prefer leaders with greater physical stature, while Study 2 indicates that males with greater physical stature are more likely to think of themselves as qualified to be a leader and, through this increased sense of efficacy, they are more likely to demonstrate interest in pursuing a leadership position.
Consistent with emerging evidence from other research perspectives, political behavior, in this case preferences regarding political leadership, is shaped by both environmental and evolutionary forces.
presents a set of principles about how teams—and small groups in general—develop and function effectively / these are principles that have been validated in research on small groups and teams over the past 40 years / awareness of this information can guide the team leader who aims to transform a group composed of members who often differ in education, experience, attitudes, and beliefs, into an effective, cooperative, and high-performing team / present selected research findings and principles derived from these findings / examples also will clarify or illustrate applications of the principles to the full range of leadership (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Previous research has found that an electoral candidates' eight is correlated with their image. Many studies have found that height is a great asset for a candidate as height correlates with electoral outcome. In this research the previously obtained results were partially confirmed—in the first study the supporters of a given candidate estimated him as taller than his opponents (confirmed by six out of 10 candidates). The second study, conducted during the presidential elections in Poland, showed that electorate-perceived height of candidates for the Presidency changed after the first phase of elections (confirmed by three from six main candidates). These changes in electoral-perceived height depended more upon their electoral support than attitudes toward them. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
We use new data on entries and exits of US daily newspapers from 1869 to 2004 to estimate effects on political participation, party vote shares, and electoral competitiveness. Our iden-tification strategy exploits the precise timing of these events and allows for the possibility of confounding trends. We find that newspapers have a robust positive effect on political partic-ipation, with one additional newspaper increasing both presidential and congressional turnout by approximately 0.3 percentage points. Newspaper competition is not a key driver of turnout: our effect is driven mainly by the first newspaper in a market, and the effect of a second or third paper is significantly smaller. The effect on presidential turnout diminishes after the introduc-tion of radio and television, while the estimated effect on congressional turnout remains similar up to recent years. We find no evidence that partisan newspapers affect party vote shares, with confidence intervals that rule out even moderate-sized effects. We find no clear evidence that newspapers systematically help or hurt incumbents.
Two studies examined whether variations in height influence children's impressions of men and women. In Study 1, 28 preschool-aged children judged the strength, dominance, smartness, and concern for others of male and female targets of different heights. Children judged both taller male and female targets as stronger and more dominant, but not to have more concern for others or smartness than shorter targets. In Study 2, 71 preschool-aged children viewed pairs of male and female targets in three height conditions (male target taller, female target taller, targets equal height) and made trait judgments as in Study 1. Again, taller male targets were judged to be stronger, more dominant, and smarter, but not to have more concern for others than shorter female targets. Moreover, disruptions of gender-typical height differences were associated with reversals in impressions of male and female targets. That is, taller female targets were judged to be stronger, more dominant, and smarter when they appeared with shorter male targets. The present findings not only support the claim that physical stature figures importantly in the process by which children form trait impressions but also indicate that covariations between height and gender exert a strong impact on particular traits children attribute to men and women.
Leadership implies power. We argue, from a social embodiment perspective, that thinking about power involves mental simulation of vertical location. Three studies tested whether judgments of leaders’ power and information on a vertical location are interrelated. In Studies 1a–1c, participants judged a leader’s power after being presented with, among other information, an organization chart containing either a long or a short vertical line. A longer vertical line increased judged power. Study 2 showed that this effect persists when longer (vs. shorter) vertical lines are presented in an independent priming task and not in an organization chart, and that horizontal lines do not have the same effect. Finally, Studies 3a and 3b showed the reverse causal effect: information about a leader’s power influenced participants’ vertical positioning of a leader’s box in an organization chart and of a leader picture into a team picture. Implications for leadership communication are discussed.
Despite the recognized importance of leadership in organizational contexts, relatively few studies have examined the concept of leadership in various cultures. To better understand cross-cultural leadership, this study compares leadership prototypes across several countries using an attribute-rating task. Subjects (N = 142) from eight countries rated a list of 59 attributes according to how well each fit their prototype of a business leader. Results indicate significant differences among the ratings provided by subjects from different countries of traits identified as high, medium, and low in prototypicality. Subsequent multidimensional scaling aggregated across trait ratings yielded a three-dimensional configuration of countries. The relative distances between countries are discussed with respect to Hofstede's (1980) dimensions of national culture. Potential implications for selection and training of expatriate managers are discussed.
In this article we examine the association between female height and reproductive success in a US sample and present a review of previous studies on this association. We also outline possible biological explanations for our findings.
We used data from a long-term study of 5,326 female Wisconsin high school graduates to examine the association between female height and reproductive success. Twenty-one samples on this association were covered by our literature review.
Shorter women had more children surviving to age 18 than taller women, despite increased child mortality in shorter women. Taller women had a higher age at first birth and age at first marriage and reached a higher social status, but the negative effect of height on reproductive success persisted after controlling for these variables. However, while these effects were quite consistent in Western populations, they were not consistently present in non-Western populations. Our review also indicated that child mortality was almost universally higher among shorter women.
We conclude that shorter women have a higher number of live births but that final reproductive success depends on the positive effect of height on child survival.
Because male height is associated with attractiveness, dominance, and reproductive success, taller men may be less jealous. And because female height has a curvilinear relationship with health and reproductive success (with average-height females having the advantages), female height may have a curvilinear relationship with jealousy. In Study 1, male height was found to be negatively correlated with self-reported global jealousy, whereas female height was curvilinearly related to jealousy, with average-height women reporting the lowest levels of jealousy. In Study 2, male height was found to be negatively correlated with jealousy in response to socially influential, physically dominant, and physically attractive rivals. Female height was negatively correlated with jealousy in response to physically attractive, physically dominant, and high-social-status rivals; in addition, quadratic effects revealed that approximately average-height women tend to be less jealous of physically attractive rivals but more jealous of rivals with "masculine" characteristics of physical dominance and social status. (c) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Taller workers earn on average higher salaries. Recent research has proposed cognitive abilities and social skills as explanations for the height-wage premium. Another possible mechanism, employer discrimination, has found little support. In this paper, we provide some evidence in favor of the discrimination hypothesis. Using a cross section of 13 countries, we show that there is a consistent height-wage premium across Europe and that it is largely due to occupational sorting. We show that height has a significant effect for the occupational sorting of employed workers but not for the self-employed. We interpret this result as evidence of employer discrimination in favor of taller workers. Our results are consistent with the theoretical predictions of recent models on statistical discrimination and employer learning.
Examined the influence of sex, gender role characteristics, and interpersonal attractiveness on the selection of emergent leaders. Data were collected on 2 occasions from 122 subjects in 28 task groups performing "sex neutral" tasks for valued rewards over many weeks of interaction. Results showed no significant difference in the proportion of men and women to emerge as leaders through intragroup sociometric choice. Regardless of sex, group members with masculine gender role characteristics emerged as leaders significantly more than those with feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated gender role characteristics. Emergent leaders received significantly higher interpersonal attractiveness ratings than nonleaders within groups.
This paper aims to provide an overview of variations in average height between 10 European countries, and between socio-economic groups within these countries.
Data on self-reported height of men and women aged 20-74 years were obtained from national health, level of living or multipurpose surveys for 1987-1994. Regression analyses were used to estimate height differences between educational groups and to evaluate whether the differences in average height between countries and between educational groups were smaller among younger than among older birth cohorts.
Men and women were on average tallest in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands and shortest in France, Italy and Spain (range for men: 170-179 cm; range for women: 160-167 cm). The differences in average height between northern and southern European countries were not smaller among younger than among older birth cohorts. In most countries average height increased linearly with increasing birth-year (approximately 0.7-0.8 cm/5 years for men and approximately 0.4 cm/5 years for women). In all countries, lower educated men and women on average were shorter than higher educated men (range of differences: 1.6-3.0 cm) and women (range of differences: 1.2-2.2 cm). In most countries, education-related height differences were not smaller among younger than among older birth cohorts.
The persistence of international differences in average height into the youngest birth cohorts indicates a high degree of continuity of differences between countries in childhood living conditions. Similarly, the persistence of education-related height differences indicates continuity of socio-economic differences in childhood living conditions, and also suggests that socio-economic differences in childhood living conditions will continue to contribute to socio-economic differences in health at adult ages.