Facial appearance and leadership: An overview and challenges for new research Panu Poutvaara ⁎ ,1 Ifo Institute, Poschingerstr. 5, 81679 Munich, Germany article info abstract Article history: Received 2 July 2014 Accepted 17 August 2014 There is plenty of evidence showing that facial features predict success in politics, business and the military. Some of the papers providing this evidence are related to selection into leadership posi- tions, others into how facial features predict performance in such a position. The purpose of this introduction is to provide an overview of The Leadership Quarterly special issue on Facial Appear- ance and Leadership, as well as to discuss the use of good looks as a heuristic, and difficulties relat- ed to establishing causal relationships in this area of research. © 2014 Published by Elsevier Inc. Keywords: Leadership Facial appearance Evolutionary psychology Beauty Elections Introduction The selection of leaders plays a major role in the success of societies and various organizations within societies. At the level of so- cieties, hereditary leadership and leadership acquired based on physical force have given way to a democratic process, in which large groups of voters select the leader for a limited time period. Leadership can also be conferred based on expert choice (like the board of directors choosing a CEO), or by higher-ranked leaders based on a job opening or various promotion criteria within an organization. Yet, the evolutionary mechanisms that have affected leadership choices in the distant past still affect decision-making processes. When making choices, people rely on various heuristics. In the area of leadership selection, physiological cues like facial appear- ance, height and body shape still affect decision-making processes in modern societies. Candidates who look more attractive or are perceived to look more competent have been shown to have an electoral advantage in Australia (King & Leigh, 2009), Brazil and Mexico (Lawson, Lenz, Baker, & Myers, 2010), Finland (Berggren, Jordahl, & Poutvaara, 2010; Poutvaara, Jordahl, & Berggren, 2009), France (Antonakis & Dalgas, 2009), Germany (Rosar, Klein, & Beckers, 2008), Ireland (Buckley, Collins, & Reidy, 2007), Japan (Rule et al., 2010), Switzerland (Lutz, 2010), the United Kingdom (Banducci, Karp, Thrasher, & Rallings, 2008) and the United States (Ballew & Todorov, 2007; Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005). Rule and Ambady (2008) and Wong, Ormiston, and Haselhuhn (2011) conclude that CEOs' facial features predict their firms' financial performance. Graham, Harvey, and Puri (2010) find that facial appearance of CEOs predicts their compensation, but does not predict their company's performance (Graham et al., 2010). Furthermore, facial dominance predicts success in the military (Mazur, Mazur, & Keating, 1984). The aim of this special issue is to take stock of the current state of research on the effects of facial appearance on leadership in var- ious organizational contexts, most notably business and politics. The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 801–804 ⁎ Tel.: +49 89 9224 1372. E-mail address: poutvaara@ifo.de. 1 University of Munich. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2014.08.003 1048-9843/© 2014 Published by Elsevier Inc. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect The Leadership Quarterly journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua