Judging a Dictator by His Face

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a video address to the nation in Moscow on 21st February which unleashed a barrage of analysis across the world, focusing on the mental state of the leader the West fears may be provoking the next war in Europe.

Vladimir Putin doesn’t smile much.

There is a convergence in the journalistic psychological analysis of Putin as the angry, irrational paranoiac.

A just-published psychological study entitled, 'Dictators Differ From Democratically Elected Leaders in Facial Warmth', investigated differences in perceptions of dictators versus democratically elected leaders.

The public, not psychologists or experts, successfully classified pictures of faces of 160 world leaders as ‘democrats’ or ‘dictators’ significantly better than chance, just by looking at their images.

The study excluded well-known heads of state to minimize recognition (e.g., Vladimir Putin, Justin Trudeau, Donald Trump), and female heads of state, to avoid gender biases in participants’ ratings.

The average participant correctly distinguished unfamiliar democrats’ and dictators’ leadership style about 69% of the time from facial photographs.

Participants rated the attractiveness, competence, dominance, facial maturity, likability, and trustworthiness of the leaders’ faces. Democratically elected leaders looked significantly more attractive and warmer than dictators did.

The authors of the study, based at MacEwan University and the University of Toronto, Canada, conclude that leaders’ facial appearance could therefore contribute to their success within their respective political systems. These systems shape how leaders end up looking because you have to present a certain way in order to climb the different greasy poles presented by contrasting regimes.

In other words, according to this research, Putin may loom intimidatingly because that is what is needed in order to make a dictatorship work. He appears very different from the kind of leaders journalists and voters are familiar with in the West.

People in democracies who are not used to being lectured by dictators, may be contrasting how they expect their leaders to charm the camera, compared to how despots tend to look in order to do their job, and drawing the wrong conclusion.

The authors of this new study Miranda Giacomin, Alexander Mulligan, and Nicholas Rule point out that previous research has already established that the general public can differentiate between Republican and Democratic U.S. Senate candidates based on their faces, and can similarly reliably infer, again just from pictures of faces, the ideology of unfamiliar Swiss parliament members.

Previous research they refer to has also established that a dominant face is a winning face when the audience is conservative, but backfires and decreases success when the audience is liberal. On the other hand, a non-dominant face constitutes a winning face among more left-wing audiences but flops among conservatives.

Previous research these authors cite has also established people favor leaders with dominant faces during war times but with more feminine and trustworthy faces when at peace. We prefer dominant-looking participants when selecting team members for competitions but warm-looking compatriots in cooperative settings.

Different types of organizations also appear to select specific leaders: CEOs of non-profit organizations look warmer and less dominant than CEOs of for-profit organizations, and the leaders of mafia families express different social traits than the leaders of law firms. People could accurately distinguish military (i.e., Army Generals) and sport leaders (i.e., coaches) from business (i.e., CEOs), just from their faces.

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People expect warmer and more attractive leaders to lead democratic nations and that the leaders of democratic nations do indeed look warmer and more attractive than dictators.

Where popularity plays a critical role in whether someone emerges as a leader then it makes sense, the authors contend, that democracies will tend to be run by people who look a certain way. In contrast, looking colder and less attractive might similarly facilitate the command of authority on which dictators rely to control the citizens of their nations.

Not only might democratic leaders who look attractive and warm have a potential edge in popular elections, autocrats who look the opposite (e.g., unattractive and cold) might hold advantages that allow them to maintain power in the face of threats.

A common question asked of authoritarian regimes is why people stand by such leaders. The authors of this study, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, suggest their research offers a possible explanation.

They argue that facial appearances match the political systems in which they operate.

Democracies thrive on honesty and justice, these authors argue, so leaders with warmer faces may more easily get elected to power.

Harsher, less warm faces match dictatorships, which run on domination and deception; so, appearing intimidating might help to inspire the fear needed to dominate a population. People may therefore readily follow those who suit their impressions of the political system more broadly

An even deeper more disturbing implication is possible – if you look a certain way and gain popularity by looking tough because the going is tough, then maybe as a leader, you become motivated to create the conditions which enhance your popularity.

Those who look peace-loving may be driven to appease rather than find themselves in conflict regardless of the interests of their country; to what extent is leader personality the key variable behind the scenes?

So intimidating leaders may be driven to create the conflict conditions where intimidation is more likely to be required and successful.