Archive

The Face of Leadership: How CEOs’ Facial Appearance Predicts Business Success

Recent research in social psychology has demonstrated that the facial appearance of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and other business leaders predicts their companies’ financial performance. In this article, we review initial evidence illustrating the relation between CEO facial appearance and corporate success. We then delve into more recent research on how this relationship varies by economic climate, leader ethnicity, and CEO sex. Further studies are discussed that examined how facial cues related... / more

What does your selfie say about you?

Selfie is a new form of self-expression in this digital age. In this post, I will discuss our research on how selfies reveal the personality of their owners and how people judge others’ personality based on selfies. / more

Yielding to temptation: How and why some people are better at controlling themselves

When science selects for fraud

Are fraud and other questionable practices in science caused by a few bad apples, or a culture that rewards based on results, not rigor? In this post, I will argue that our scientific environment is selecting for the wrong kind of scientist. / more

What can metaphors tell us about personality?

Our language is filled with metaphors (Gibbs, 1994). We have “bright” ideas, try to stay “balanced”, and feel “close” to others, but sometimes feel “down”, have “dark” thoughts, and “explode” with rage. What is the purpose of such language? 

According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980; 1999), metaphors allow us to understand abstract thoughts and feelings that cannot be directly seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. Stated a different way, we may speak metaphorically because...