Trust in Baby Faced Execs????

Would you trust this person?
Image Source: PAVC-Babyface@blogger.com

Source of text: "The Face of Innocence" by Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, July 21, 2008.

From the department of "we think with our (evolved and emotional) brains, not (just) our (rational) minds".

Vedantam writes:

Jiang, Gorn and Johar recently published their analysis in the Journal of Consumer Research. They had volunteers evaluate claims of innocence made by the chief executive of a fictitious company called Biomedic, in the context of "news reports" that the company's cold remedy, Coughless, was producing unexpected side effects. The volunteers were given a statement from the company in which the chief executive denied knowing about the side effects ahead of time.

All volunteers were shown a photo of the chief executive; without their knowledge, some volunteers saw a picture whose features had been electronically morphed to appear more babyish -- with large eyes and a relatively small nose and chin. Other volunteers saw a photo that had been morphed to look more aquiline and mature.

"When a PR crisis hits, consumers ask themselves, 'Why did this happen? Who is to blame?' and if the company is blamed, then the next question is, 'Was it intentional?' " Johar said.

People who spend a lot of time tracking the particular company might not be swayed by the appearance of spokesmen and the chief executive, but for the vast majority of people, who form judgments about reputation through fleeting glances, appearances matter. The volunteers in the study were more likely to believe the chief executive's assertions of innocence when his face was babyish rather than mature.

Johar said the bias persisted only up to a point: "We found that if the crisis was very severe, the face did not help -- so even a baby face can't get away with murder."......

The researchers found they were able to reverse the bias in the course of the experiment: Volunteers were shown a number of faces matched with descriptions of various kinds of wrongdoing; the people with babyish features were all said to be guilty of intentional crimes. When these volunteers were tested with the various kinds of chief executive faces and claims of innocence, they were more likely to believe a mature-faced chief executive rather than a baby-faced one.

Comment: Being aware that such a bias exists, the question arises of how one can minimize its impact in important decisions. Perhaps one approach might be to insulate oneself from the biasing input at least during the analytic process involved in decision making. Try using decision tools on paper or on computer screen that do not include photos. JAD