There’s a reason why we usually can spot a cop who is not wearing a uniform with surprising accuracy. It’s also the same reason movies and TV shows often have a variation of this line — “you strike me as a cop.”
We need a German word for having a face that perfectly matches one’s profession.
That particular West Point class of 1915 was the famous "The Class The Stars Fell On." Obviously the timing right before WWI helped, war records early in one's career are good for progression, and many stayed in the service during the Great Depression when there was very limited alternative economic opportunity, and then they were mostly Colonels or Lieutenant Colonels on the eve of WWII. Like a lot of them, Eisenhower was stuck at the rank of Major for 16 years, even though he had worked for and had good relationships and reputations with Marshall, McArthur, and Pershing. With McArthur (and Patton) he helped clear out the Bonus Army with chloro-arsenic-heterocycle based vomiting agent DM, called Adamsite after its inventor, famous American Organic Chemist Roger Adams of Boston (yes, related to John Adams), who also discovered CBD. Pershing was reportedly Eisenhower's favorite boss, and he ended up gifting him Hermann Goring's unique Merkel 303 Over- Under shotgun, which Pershing donated to the NRA for permanent display at their free museum headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia.
But what really made the difference for that class was Eisenhower himself, who quite apart from his cultivated avucular political persona, was widely regarded as one of the most fiercely determined and intelligent of the group and, apparently, by far the most charismatic, Bill Clinton level stuff.
While stationed at Fort Lewis Eisenhower had a chance meeting with, IIRC, FDR's daughter, charmed the pants off her (perhaps not literally, then again ...) and she introduced him to dad and FDR was likewise charmed and also convinced that Eisenhower was a good progressive and basically had the same political ideas, values, and goals, and so a good, reliable agent for that agenda should any political question arise in the field (things being much more genuinely delegated and decentralized than today when the White House just runs everything.) Like Groves thought of Oppenheimer, FDR concluded that he needed someone who could toe-to-toe with some of the world's top egos and talents, who could "manage outsized personalities with ease" and couldn't be intimidated. Even as a relatively low ranking officer at the time, FDR knew he found his man. America seems as if it was just overflowing with world-class talents at that time.
That's how Eisenhower got promoted from Lieutenant Colonel (O-5) to Five Star General (O-11) in just 18 months, which even in the midst of WWII was an astonishing extreme outlier (which everyone knew and noticed and gossiped about, you can be sure.) And what Eisenhower did was get strong influence over future assignments and promotions and then pull everyone he already knew best from his West Point graduating class along with him, whether they were already Generals or just needed his help in getting quickly bumped up. Not the last time "guys who just happened to get thrown together in college" had an outsized influence on the course of human events.
People definitely spot this in person...some of the art of politics is coming off as a leader via marketing even when the candidate in real life is not particularly impressive. that's my impression from working on the Hill at one point - had a fair number of opportunities to be around various members in small settings and most of them were non-entities that I could barely believe were in their jobs.
Enough elected officials are such poor specimens that I'd say the American democratic process doesn't select for leadership. A very partial list: Lindsey Graham - weak jaw and chin, effeminate manner. Mike DeWine - diminutive, mole-like. Adam Schiff - pencil-necked, cherub-faced. Jerry Nadler - grotesque garden gnome.
They look and act despicably. You wouldn't follow them out of a burning building.
The old fashioned term for this was "command presence."
Definitely. The intention was that members sent to Congress would be accomplished men who would protect the interests of their community or state. The modern party machine version of politics selects for weasels adept at navigating lowest common denominator rent seeking.
"Facial traits are the primary driver of subject perceptions of leadership ability." So who cares if 500 respondents' (hopefully not college students) choices correlated with the promotion of the cadets.
Wouldn't it be weird if certain leadership qualities (confidence, focus, passion) is reflected in someone's face?
I did not read the paper (just the abstract) but it sounds as if the "researchers" did not identify which particular facial features were the deciding factors.
They're already on dangerous ground, with a paper that suggests phenotypes associated with certain behavioral traits. So the obvious spin is that promotion to leadership is more based on cultural stereotypes that need to be socially engineered away. This is not to say you can't end up with a Zapp Brannigan or GW Bush.
I saw this at work in my pledge class. There were twelve of us and during our first week together, everyone coalesced around two young men and (to my disgust) would look to them googly-eyed for leadership. I was absolutely perplexed. Until then I had naively assumed I was a natural leader. I could not sway the group at all with good arguments or obviously better ideas (which in retrospect, were not better. I didn't understand the priorities of frat boys). What was their secret? One was a loud braggart/ladies man and the other was a very smart, quiet, dud with no interest in being friends with more than one other kid in the class. Why was everyone automatically looking to them for decisions?
Took me a while to figure out that they were the best looking of us. Turns out evolution programmed a very simple algorithm in us because, apparently, it's more important to have certainty about who is the leader than to have the best leader. On average it's better that every man agree to pull in the same direction, than to take time to decide what is the best direction.
I think this mechanism is about getting newly formed groups to organize quickly. I also think that a longer lived group has the time to use better selection criteria and often does.
Even then, intelligence and judgement are not the only criteria. You still need that primitive thing where people look at you and hear you and have confidence you are in charge. That's why Dungeons & Dragons made charisma one of the character traits.
I have known two guys in different contexts who were natural leaders, and they were both goodlooking - not in the athletic way, just an ordinary, friendly way. They were both friendly and cheerful, you wanted them to like you.
They also didn't take positions in conflicts, except if you talked to them directly about it, in which case they always agreed with you. One of them was in a more important context for me. It took me a while to discover his strategy. He promised to back me up once, but then when the time came he had a reason not to be in the room for the discussion, how convenient. Afterward he had time to talk to each person separately, always understanding and the great friend. It worked with a lot of people, but not with me when I wisened up.
"To be liked by everyone you must think nothing, be nothing."
My strategy was instead to always be competent, study the work well, and work hard and be friends with those I was friends with, which was enough in that context. Above all, I thought, aside from any natural capabilities, your best asset when going for the leadership position is to be very competent. Then it is also much easier to tell others what to do, and they are more comfortable with listening to you.
And also, don't be aggressive and insulting, and don't be childish. Take a stand like a mature man.
that all resonates. I think the instinct to follow the good looking, and to assume goodness in the good looking is impossible to resist when you are young. Most of us can see through it later, but in high doses it can still disarm us for a short time
Unspoken hideous truth: Facial traits are connected to at least some degree to a person's mental traits. For one thing, facial traits are affected by testosterone, which affects masculinity, which affects leadership ability. Oh, the horror.
Regarding the story about the natural leader, I had a similar experience. A woman called people together for sightseeing via an online group, but once we were all there, strangers to each other, she didn't take charge. She just talked like anyone else there. She should have raised her voice, and people would have listened, but she didn't. The result was that some broke off and walked away in the crowd. Finally I told her about a good area to start, so we went there. I didn't want to displace her from her position, no matter how badly she handled it, but I gently suggested things, and she and others listened, while I made sure not to walk in front of her. I have a long experience of organizing meetings myself, so I wasn't afraid to speak up.
If you watch Survivor, it's interesting how the leadership position is handled. People who push too hard to be leaders can be voted out. You have to show, not request. You have to build friendships. Make everyone feel special to you, like your closest confidante in a secret agreement. Make several people think "we two are the ones who are going to the end together, but keep it quiet." You create a group within the group that makes the rest follow - and special bonds within that group. You should never gather the whole group to discuss what to do, and ESPECIALLY not if there is a conflict. Instead you talk to people one by one. THEN you make a decision, when you already have the majority. Those who handle this well have a very good chance of making it to the finale. This is in Survivor of course, the conditions are specific. But you can apply this to your workplace as well.
I've been nursing the rough theory that the reason the ideal of the California blonde (and blond) exists (and existed as physical reality) is that those who made the trek to the West coast from the East coast were of a certain constitution which just so happened to coincide with favorable physical features. In short, how many ugmos are there in Southern California (really "were" until they could get there easily)?
> Another thing that reminded me of how funny baseball scouting reports are is a conversation I had with Ben Kuhn a while back.
> Me: it's weird how tall so many of the men at my level (senior staff engineer) are at big tech companies. In recent memory, I think I've only been in a meeting with one man who's shorter than me at that level or above. I'm only 1" shorter than U.S. average! And the guy who's shorter than me has worked remotely for at least a decade, so I don't know if people really register his height. And people seem to be even taller on the management track. If I look at the VPs I've been in meetings with, they must all be at least 6' tall.
> Ben: Maybe I could be a VP at a big tech company. I'm 6' tall!
> Me: Oh, I guess I didn't know how tall 6' tall is. The VPs I'm in meetings with are noticeably taller than you. They're probably at least 6'2"?
> Ben: Wow, that's really tall for a minimum. 6'2" is 96%-ile for U.S. adult male
> When I've discussed this with successful people who work in big companies of various sorts (tech companies, consulting companies, etc.), men who would be considered tall by normal standards, 6' or 6'1", tell me that they're frequently the shortest man in the room during important meetings. 6'1" is just below the median height of a baseball player. There's something a bit odd about height seeming more correlated to success as a consultant or a programmer than in baseball, where height directly conveys an advantage.
Every male prime minister from James Callaghan to David Cameron was 5’11” or above. The shortest in recent history, Rishi Sunak (5’5”), also went down to the largest defeat in recent memory. Interestingly the prime minister who won the biggest landslide victory since Blair, Boris Johnson, was just below average height for white males at 5’9”. But he was short in a way that suggested squat and stocky doggedness (eg, he played prop in rugby, where height is a disadvantage), whereas Rishi Sunak just seemed like a miniature average human.
I had no idea Sunak is so short. Here in the US, we've long seen how tiny Macron is, but Sunak's photos must have been staged or curated somehow to mask it. Maybe he wears lifts like Putin--and Prince Harry at the Diana Memorial unveiling.
There’s a reason why we usually can spot a cop who is not wearing a uniform with surprising accuracy. It’s also the same reason movies and TV shows often have a variation of this line — “you strike me as a cop.”
We need a German word for having a face that perfectly matches one’s profession.
Nomen omen: it's latin, so it's better. In greek it would be the best.
We are talking about ones face not name.
Yes, and name in Rome was ackshually nickname: Cicero means "with a wart in his face" and in fact he was a wart in Rome's face.
> "The 1912 West Point football team featured two future 5-star generals, Dwight Eisenhower (3.5 from left) and Omar Bradley (far right)"
Don't forget General Gigachad (4.5 from left and again 6.5 from left).
From the cheekbones, they must be part Indian, like Elizabeth Warren.
"Facial traits are the primary driver of subject perceptions of leadership ability"
If they were showing them mid-century "posture photos," with or without jockstraps, they should have said so.
Ike was almost 21 when he started at West Point in 1911--he was too old for Annapolis. He had the good sense to not wear a helmet for the photo.
That particular West Point class of 1915 was the famous "The Class The Stars Fell On." Obviously the timing right before WWI helped, war records early in one's career are good for progression, and many stayed in the service during the Great Depression when there was very limited alternative economic opportunity, and then they were mostly Colonels or Lieutenant Colonels on the eve of WWII. Like a lot of them, Eisenhower was stuck at the rank of Major for 16 years, even though he had worked for and had good relationships and reputations with Marshall, McArthur, and Pershing. With McArthur (and Patton) he helped clear out the Bonus Army with chloro-arsenic-heterocycle based vomiting agent DM, called Adamsite after its inventor, famous American Organic Chemist Roger Adams of Boston (yes, related to John Adams), who also discovered CBD. Pershing was reportedly Eisenhower's favorite boss, and he ended up gifting him Hermann Goring's unique Merkel 303 Over- Under shotgun, which Pershing donated to the NRA for permanent display at their free museum headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia.
But what really made the difference for that class was Eisenhower himself, who quite apart from his cultivated avucular political persona, was widely regarded as one of the most fiercely determined and intelligent of the group and, apparently, by far the most charismatic, Bill Clinton level stuff.
While stationed at Fort Lewis Eisenhower had a chance meeting with, IIRC, FDR's daughter, charmed the pants off her (perhaps not literally, then again ...) and she introduced him to dad and FDR was likewise charmed and also convinced that Eisenhower was a good progressive and basically had the same political ideas, values, and goals, and so a good, reliable agent for that agenda should any political question arise in the field (things being much more genuinely delegated and decentralized than today when the White House just runs everything.) Like Groves thought of Oppenheimer, FDR concluded that he needed someone who could toe-to-toe with some of the world's top egos and talents, who could "manage outsized personalities with ease" and couldn't be intimidated. Even as a relatively low ranking officer at the time, FDR knew he found his man. America seems as if it was just overflowing with world-class talents at that time.
That's how Eisenhower got promoted from Lieutenant Colonel (O-5) to Five Star General (O-11) in just 18 months, which even in the midst of WWII was an astonishing extreme outlier (which everyone knew and noticed and gossiped about, you can be sure.) And what Eisenhower did was get strong influence over future assignments and promotions and then pull everyone he already knew best from his West Point graduating class along with him, whether they were already Generals or just needed his help in getting quickly bumped up. Not the last time "guys who just happened to get thrown together in college" had an outsized influence on the course of human events.
Thanks.
People definitely spot this in person...some of the art of politics is coming off as a leader via marketing even when the candidate in real life is not particularly impressive. that's my impression from working on the Hill at one point - had a fair number of opportunities to be around various members in small settings and most of them were non-entities that I could barely believe were in their jobs.
Enough elected officials are such poor specimens that I'd say the American democratic process doesn't select for leadership. A very partial list: Lindsey Graham - weak jaw and chin, effeminate manner. Mike DeWine - diminutive, mole-like. Adam Schiff - pencil-necked, cherub-faced. Jerry Nadler - grotesque garden gnome.
They look and act despicably. You wouldn't follow them out of a burning building.
The old fashioned term for this was "command presence."
Definitely. The intention was that members sent to Congress would be accomplished men who would protect the interests of their community or state. The modern party machine version of politics selects for weasels adept at navigating lowest common denominator rent seeking.
Testosterone?
"Facial traits are the primary driver of subject perceptions of leadership ability." So who cares if 500 respondents' (hopefully not college students) choices correlated with the promotion of the cadets.
Wouldn't it be weird if certain leadership qualities (confidence, focus, passion) is reflected in someone's face?
I did not read the paper (just the abstract) but it sounds as if the "researchers" did not identify which particular facial features were the deciding factors.
Our academics are morons.
They're already on dangerous ground, with a paper that suggests phenotypes associated with certain behavioral traits. So the obvious spin is that promotion to leadership is more based on cultural stereotypes that need to be socially engineered away. This is not to say you can't end up with a Zapp Brannigan or GW Bush.
I saw this at work in my pledge class. There were twelve of us and during our first week together, everyone coalesced around two young men and (to my disgust) would look to them googly-eyed for leadership. I was absolutely perplexed. Until then I had naively assumed I was a natural leader. I could not sway the group at all with good arguments or obviously better ideas (which in retrospect, were not better. I didn't understand the priorities of frat boys). What was their secret? One was a loud braggart/ladies man and the other was a very smart, quiet, dud with no interest in being friends with more than one other kid in the class. Why was everyone automatically looking to them for decisions?
Took me a while to figure out that they were the best looking of us. Turns out evolution programmed a very simple algorithm in us because, apparently, it's more important to have certainty about who is the leader than to have the best leader. On average it's better that every man agree to pull in the same direction, than to take time to decide what is the best direction.
I think this mechanism is about getting newly formed groups to organize quickly. I also think that a longer lived group has the time to use better selection criteria and often does.
Even then, intelligence and judgement are not the only criteria. You still need that primitive thing where people look at you and hear you and have confidence you are in charge. That's why Dungeons & Dragons made charisma one of the character traits.
Plus the queers in your frat just liked looking at the handsome boys.
I'll have you know we were able to reduce homosexuality and cannibalism by over 50% in my four years!
You put them on the Eat Me float from the end of "Animal House" and drove it out of town.
I have known two guys in different contexts who were natural leaders, and they were both goodlooking - not in the athletic way, just an ordinary, friendly way. They were both friendly and cheerful, you wanted them to like you.
They also didn't take positions in conflicts, except if you talked to them directly about it, in which case they always agreed with you. One of them was in a more important context for me. It took me a while to discover his strategy. He promised to back me up once, but then when the time came he had a reason not to be in the room for the discussion, how convenient. Afterward he had time to talk to each person separately, always understanding and the great friend. It worked with a lot of people, but not with me when I wisened up.
"To be liked by everyone you must think nothing, be nothing."
My strategy was instead to always be competent, study the work well, and work hard and be friends with those I was friends with, which was enough in that context. Above all, I thought, aside from any natural capabilities, your best asset when going for the leadership position is to be very competent. Then it is also much easier to tell others what to do, and they are more comfortable with listening to you.
And also, don't be aggressive and insulting, and don't be childish. Take a stand like a mature man.
that all resonates. I think the instinct to follow the good looking, and to assume goodness in the good looking is impossible to resist when you are young. Most of us can see through it later, but in high doses it can still disarm us for a short time
Steve, you got cucked!!!
Unspoken hideous truth: Facial traits are connected to at least some degree to a person's mental traits. For one thing, facial traits are affected by testosterone, which affects masculinity, which affects leadership ability. Oh, the horror.
Regarding the story about the natural leader, I had a similar experience. A woman called people together for sightseeing via an online group, but once we were all there, strangers to each other, she didn't take charge. She just talked like anyone else there. She should have raised her voice, and people would have listened, but she didn't. The result was that some broke off and walked away in the crowd. Finally I told her about a good area to start, so we went there. I didn't want to displace her from her position, no matter how badly she handled it, but I gently suggested things, and she and others listened, while I made sure not to walk in front of her. I have a long experience of organizing meetings myself, so I wasn't afraid to speak up.
If you watch Survivor, it's interesting how the leadership position is handled. People who push too hard to be leaders can be voted out. You have to show, not request. You have to build friendships. Make everyone feel special to you, like your closest confidante in a secret agreement. Make several people think "we two are the ones who are going to the end together, but keep it quiet." You create a group within the group that makes the rest follow - and special bonds within that group. You should never gather the whole group to discuss what to do, and ESPECIALLY not if there is a conflict. Instead you talk to people one by one. THEN you make a decision, when you already have the majority. Those who handle this well have a very good chance of making it to the finale. This is in Survivor of course, the conditions are specific. But you can apply this to your workplace as well.
I've been nursing the rough theory that the reason the ideal of the California blonde (and blond) exists (and existed as physical reality) is that those who made the trek to the West coast from the East coast were of a certain constitution which just so happened to coincide with favorable physical features. In short, how many ugmos are there in Southern California (really "were" until they could get there easily)?
Dan Luu has written about a similar effect in tech company management: https://danluu.com/talent/
> Another thing that reminded me of how funny baseball scouting reports are is a conversation I had with Ben Kuhn a while back.
> Me: it's weird how tall so many of the men at my level (senior staff engineer) are at big tech companies. In recent memory, I think I've only been in a meeting with one man who's shorter than me at that level or above. I'm only 1" shorter than U.S. average! And the guy who's shorter than me has worked remotely for at least a decade, so I don't know if people really register his height. And people seem to be even taller on the management track. If I look at the VPs I've been in meetings with, they must all be at least 6' tall.
> Ben: Maybe I could be a VP at a big tech company. I'm 6' tall!
> Me: Oh, I guess I didn't know how tall 6' tall is. The VPs I'm in meetings with are noticeably taller than you. They're probably at least 6'2"?
> Ben: Wow, that's really tall for a minimum. 6'2" is 96%-ile for U.S. adult male
> When I've discussed this with successful people who work in big companies of various sorts (tech companies, consulting companies, etc.), men who would be considered tall by normal standards, 6' or 6'1", tell me that they're frequently the shortest man in the room during important meetings. 6'1" is just below the median height of a baseball player. There's something a bit odd about height seeming more correlated to success as a consultant or a programmer than in baseball, where height directly conveys an advantage.
What's the average height for recent Presidents? I'm guessing about 6'1".
I'm 6'4", which makes me kind of dorky. But when I think about the advantages of being shorter, I imagine being 6'2" rather than 5'6".
Every male prime minister from James Callaghan to David Cameron was 5’11” or above. The shortest in recent history, Rishi Sunak (5’5”), also went down to the largest defeat in recent memory. Interestingly the prime minister who won the biggest landslide victory since Blair, Boris Johnson, was just below average height for white males at 5’9”. But he was short in a way that suggested squat and stocky doggedness (eg, he played prop in rugby, where height is a disadvantage), whereas Rishi Sunak just seemed like a miniature average human.
I had no idea Sunak is so short. Here in the US, we've long seen how tiny Macron is, but Sunak's photos must have been staged or curated somehow to mask it. Maybe he wears lifts like Putin--and Prince Harry at the Diana Memorial unveiling.