Facial Dominance of West Point Cadets as a Predictor of Later ...

Facial Dominance of West Point Cadetsas a Predictor of Later Military R ank*

ULRICH MUELLER, University of Marburg, GermanyALLAN MAZUR, Syracuse University

Abstract

Facial dominance of West Point cadets, measured from their graduation portraits, isknown to be related to cadets' ranks at the military academy, but it has been reportedto be unrelated to their ranks in later career (Mazur, Mazur & Keating 1984). Withimproved methods of data collection and analysis, we show that cadets' facial dominance,while still unrelated to their ranks at midcareer, is related to promotions in late career,20 or more years after the portraits were taken. These results suggest that the absenceof physical features from current models of status attainment is a serious omission.

Influenced by Blau and Duncan (1967), studies of status attainment havefocused on family background and education as primary determinants of one'soccupational rank. Despite repeated suggestions that a person's physicalappearance also has important effects on his or her life chances (Berscheid &Walster 1974; Gillis 1982; Guthrie 1976; Hatfield & Sprecher 1986; Mazur &Robertson 1972; Patzer 1985), physical features of the face and body have beenvirtually ignored in modem research on status attainment.

Studies relating physical features to personality were popular during thefirst half of this century (Gowin 1915). Among the best known is the "somato-type" research of Sheldon (1942), whose claimed relationships between bodytype and temperament were treated skeptically because of biases in his method,though careful replications by others have verified some of the correlations(Child 1950; Cortes & Gatti 1972). Stogdill's (1974) review of numerous earlystudies, mostly of school-age groups, concludes that leadership (measured in

* The authors appreciate the cooperation of the men of the West Point class of 1950 and theadvice and support of Colonel Morris J. Herbert (Ret.), U.S. Military Academy, Association ofGraduates. The Office of Institutional Research (U.S. Military Academy), the U.S. ArmyMilitary History Institute, and the Center forAirForceHistory helped us in obtaining portraitsshown in Figure 1. The research was funded bygrantMu609/5-1 from the Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft and by a grant from the Zentrum für Umfragen, Methoden und Analysen (ZUMA)in Mannheim/Germany to the first author. Direct correspondence to Ulrich Mueller, Instituteof Medical Sociology, University of Marburg, Bunsenstrasse 2, 35033 Marburg, Germany; [email protected].

C The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, March 1996, 74(3):823-850

at Pennsylvania State University on A

pril 9, 2016http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/

824 / Social Forces 74:3, March 1996

diverse ways) ig correlated with height and with a mecomorphie, or athiede,physique.

It is a common observation that certain individuals have "dominant-looking" faces whereas the faces of others are perceived as submissive.American subjects reliably sort facial portraits along a dominance-submissive-ness dimension, and these portraits are given similar ratings in a wide varietyof cultures around the world (Keating, Mazur & Segall 1981a, 1981b). Anecdotessuggest that dominant appearance is correlated with actual status attainment,especially within the military, as when Atkinson (1981) refers to the "lanternjaw and chiseled features prized in military officers" or the "square-jawedlooks ... considered vital" in a first captain at the U.S. Military Academy atWest Point (1989:118). Also consider this description of a fictitious first captain,written by an academy graduate: "He had one of those young Gregory Peckfaces, the dark handsome good looks of a born general. It had always seemedthere was an unwritten requirement that first captains and other high-rankingcadets be attractive..., not just good-looking, but ... idols. Statues to theAmerican idea of cadet.... At 6'1," 185 pounds, a letter man in soccer andlacrosse, he was the ideal first captain. There was a certain awkwardness —intimidation — in his presence" (Truscott 1978:414).

Mazur, Mazur and Keating (1984) tested these anecdotes, asking if WestPoint cadets with dominant-looking faces, or who were tall or athletic, werepromoted higher than classmates with less impressive looks. Cadets from theclass of 1950 were rated as facially dominant or submissive by judges whoviewed their graduation portraits. Dominant-looking cadets were indeedpromoted to significantly higher ranks than submissive-looking cadets in theirjunior and senior years at West Point. However the investigators found norelationship between facial dominance and rank attainment over the next 20years of military service. Athletes enjoyed some advantage in promotionthroughout their careers, but height was generally unrelated to rank.

The investigators were puzzled that rank correlated with facial dominancewhile at West Point but not in later career, and they suggested four plausibleexplanations.(1) A cadet's rank is the cause rather than the effect of his appearance in the

yearbook portrait. Cadets who enjoy the status of officers communicate theirposition through erect posture and perhaps through facial gestures, whichare recorded in the photograph.

(2) As men enter middle age, physical features lose their earlier relevance forhierarchical placement, at least in comparison with nonphysical features.

(3) Facial features remain important throughout the career, and they continueto influence the promotion board, which requires an updated photographof each candidate. But a man's face changes over the years, so his appear-ance in a graduation portrait bears little relationship to his appearance inmiddle age.

(4) Facial appearance is a leadership quality that matters most in primarygroups, when those recommending promotion know the candidate person-ally. That is the case at West Point where the decision is based on evalua-tions by cadets and tactical officers, and on promotion to the highest ranks,when the small pool of candidates is again known by those in judgment. At



Dow

nloaded from


Facial Dominance and Military Rank / 825

the junior and middle ranks outside West Point, the candidates are usuallyunknown to promotion boards and decisions are based on extensive officerevaluation reports, career patterns (whether candidates have had therequisite operational and command positions in the right order and withinprescribed time limits), and seniority. Senior officers, however, will all haveoutstanding evaluation reports with little to distinguish between them.Seniority considerations on this level lose their weight.Another plausible explanation is sampling bias: West Point graduates make

up only 5-10% of all army and air force officers. Also, West Point cadets mightbe selected more for physical (including facial) appearance than officers whoreceived their commission elsewhere. Thus, while facial appearance may beimportant for promotions on all hierarchy levels, if we study a sample contain-ing West Point cadets only, this factor may be masked because even cadetswith, by West Point standards, average facial appearance, might look moredominant than the majority of junior and middle officers who are not in oursample.

We should then observe a correlation reappear between facial dominanceand rank among those men in the sample who obtained promotion to general,since most are from West Point: The percentage of West Point graduates amongall brigadier and major generals from World War II until the mid-70s wasbetween 45 and 80%, among all lieutenant and full generals was between 50 and100% (Moore & Trout 1978); in the early 1980s among all generals it was 40%(Atkinson 1989:496). In our sample, 90% of all promotions to brigadier and 65%of all promotions to major general occurred by 1975, 82% of all promotions tolieutenant and 66% of all promotions to full general occurred by 1980.

Now we are able to evaluate these diverse hypotheses. In 1990, members ofthe class of 1950 were questioned about their military careers, which by thenhad all been completed. At the time of the survey, there were still 540 survivorsof the original 670 graduates, making the class an ideal object for studyingcareers in an occupational hierarchy. A refined analysis of these new dataprovides considerable clarification of the promotion process and some correctionof the relationship of facial dominance to military rank attainment.

Careers of the West Point Class of 1950

Like all cadets, the class of 1950 entered the military academy as formallyundifferentiated plebes, but in their junior year they were ranked as corporalsor privates. In senior year about one-quarter of the men became cadet officers,the remainder, sergeants.

At graduation, all men received the same rank, second lieutenant, andentered one of the army's several branches (e.g., infantry, engineers) or the airforce, which at this time did not have its own academy. Men almost always stayin their service, and tend to stay in their branch, for the rest of their profession-al lives. Most young officers earn advanced degrees and seek a variety ofassignments in military schools, command, and staff positions.

Within three years, 8% of the class members were dead (two-thirds of themkilled in the Korean War, which began only weeks after graduation). By 1960,



Dow

nloaded from



20% of the class had resigned for various attractions outside — and frustrationsinside — the army (Butler 1971a). Nearly all those who remained in the militarythrough the 1950s would stay for 20 years (or more) in order to retire withbenefits.

While promotion of young officers is nearly automatic through the rank ofcaptain, being determined primarily by amount of time served, early promotionto the rank of major or lieutenant colonel is regarded as an indication of specialmerit. Of the class of 1950, 6% made lieutenant colonel by 1964, and these menwere more likely than their classmates to make general. In fact, speed ofpromotion to each rank predicts the likelihood and speed of promotion to allsubsequent ranks. The sorting of men begins early, separating those who willreach the top from those who will not, as occurs in many other occupationalhierarchies (Mazur, Mazur & Keating 1984).

Between 1966 and 1972, about one-third of the men still on active duty wereselected to attend a war college, nearly always after promotion to lieutenantcolonel. For war college graduates promotion to colonel was virtually certain.Although not a formal requirement, it seems that no one has been selected forgeneral since World War II who has not graduated from a war college. In armyjargon, war college is an essential "ticket punch" on the route to general.

Many of the classmen served in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War,but only seven were killed, reflecting the relative safety of their higher ranks.Nearly everyone in the class who remained in the military had been promotedat least to lieutenant colonel by 1970, the first year in which they were eligiblefor retirement with benefits. Mandatory retirement year (with few exceptions)was 1978 at the lieutenant colonel rank, 1980 at the colonel rank, and 1985 at allgeneral ranks. Eight percent of the graduates of 1950 became generals (the firstones in 1971), making them by this measure one of the most successful ofmodern West Point classes. Most of these generals remained on active dutyduring the 1980s, filling the highest ranks of the American military.

Methods

DATA

New findings to be reported here depend on important improvements inmethod from that used by Mazur, Mazur and Keating (1984). Their originalstudy was based on published sources of data. West Point's student yearbook,The Howitzer (1950), contained cadets' portraits and indirect measures of othervariables including height and athletic prowess. The academy's annual Registerof Graduates and Former Cadets (1964, 1980) listed records of promotion, but the1980 edition of the Register, the latest available for that study, did not containfinal ranks for the most successful graduates, those still on active duty in 1980.

These original data are merged with new data obtained for the presentstudy from a questionnaire mailed in 1990 to 539 men from the class of 1950 forwhom recent addresses were available. This was a fairly complete mailing to thesurviving members of the class. After two follow-up mailings, we received 434completed questionnaires, an unusually high response rate of 81%, no doubtbecause of the participation of West Point's Association of Graduates in the



Dow

nloaded from



project. Of 416 classmen who served 20 or more years in the military, 334 (80%)returned questionnaires, including virtually all the generals. The 16-pagequestionnaire asked about promotions, family background, education, careermotivations, fertility, and family relationships.

VARIABLES

We are interested in predicting a classman's military rank attainment by thetime of retirement, as reported in his questionnaire. Considering only the 337respondents who served 20 years or more in the military, the distribution offinal ranks is, in ascending order, major (1%), lieutenant colonel (26%), colonel(56%), brigadier (one-star) generals (7%), major (two-star) generals (5%),lieutenant (three-star) generals (3%), and "full" (four-star) generals (2%).

Elsewhere a considerable number of independent variables, includingseveral measures of family background, were tested as predictors of militaryrank (Mazur, Mazur & Keating 1984; Mazur & Mueller in press; Mueller 1991).

Here we restrict our models to the following independent variables, whichare of particular theoretical or empirical interest.

FaceFacial dominance was measured for all cadets who remained in the military for20 years or more. Their yearbook graduation portraits (Howitzer 1950) werecopied on slides for projection in front of 20 to 40 judges (usually undergradu-ate classes), who independently rated faces on a seven-point scale of dominance-submissiveness (1 = very submissive, 4= neutral or undecided, 7 = very domi-nant). Judges were instructed that a dominant person tells other people what todo, is respected, influential, and often a leader; submissive or subordinatepeople are not influential or assertive and are usually directed by others. On86% of the rated slides, at least half the judges' choices fell within two adjacentscale points, indicating more clustering than would be expected if the choiceswere uniformly distributed across the seven-point scale. Scores on the 14% ofthe slides that did not meet this cluster requirement were dropped as unreliable(the median of those dropped, however, did not differ from the median of therest). The median score for each slide was taken as the value for face. Thesevalues ranged from 2 (moderately submissive) to 6 (moderately dominant) witha median value of 4 (neutral) and a mode of 5 (slightly dominant). Smiling,especially broad smiling, is known to lower facial dominance (Keating, Mazur& Segall 1981a, 1981b). In our sample, slight smile led to a 0.3 score pointdecline, broad smile (teeth visible) to a 0.7 score point decline. Dominancescores were adjusted accordingly (Mazur, Mazur & Keating 1984). Figure 1displays cadet faces exemplifying a range of dominance scores.

Athletic

By common standards, nearly all cadets are athletic and well proportionedphysically, since these qualities influence admission to the academy. In order tomark the most athletic of these men, a dummy variable athletic was scored as 1for the 16% of the classmen listed in The Howitzer as participants on a collegiateteam in their senior (varsity) year; the remainder of the class was scored 0.



Dow

nloaded from



FIGURE 1: Cadets of Varying Facial Dominance Who Became High-RankedGenerals, as Cadets and at the Peak of Their Careers'

Wallace Hall Nutting Charles Alvin Gabriel

Faces are arranged from most to least dominant. The cadets with their ranks and finalpositions are, from left: General Wallace Nutting (face - 6), commander-in-chief, U.S.Readiness Command; General Charles Gabriel (face - 5), Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force;



Dow

nloaded from



FIGURE 1: Cadets of Varying Facial Dominance Who Became High-RankedGenerals, as Cadets and at the Peak of Their Careers' (Continued)

John Adams Wickham Jr. Lincoln Faurer

' General John Wickham, Jr. (face - 4), Chief of Staff, U.S. Army; Lieutenant GeneralLincoln Faurer (face - 3), head of the National Security Agency. Portraits as cadets arefrom The Howitzer 1950, portraits as officers are from the U.S. Army Military HistoryInstitute and the Center for Air Force History.



Dow

nloaded from



Athletic is not simply a measure of physique, since it must include otherpersonal and symbolic qualities associated with athletic prowess.

General Order of MeritUntil 1978, every graduate of West Point was given a number at graduation toindicate his "general order of merit" (GOM) within the class (Register 1980), thelower the better. Basically a performance measure, this aggregate evaluationcombines academic grades, peer and instructor ratings of leadership andmilitary aptitude, and physical education grades. At least until midcareer, GOMis known to be related to subsequent promotion (Butler 1976; Mazur, Mazur &Keating 1984).

Friends

Mazur, Mazur and Keating (1984) found that a crude measure of cadets'sociability predicted high military rank, so we include it here. There is adescription approximately 50 words long of each graduating cadet in TheHowitzer, typical of student yearbooks. The 41% of cadets whose descriptionsmade specific reference to their "friends" were scored 1 on the dummy variable,friends; others were scored 0.

War College

Graduation from a war college is an essential step in becoming a general.Attendance at any one of five equivalent war colleges and date of graduationwere coded from the Register of Graduates (1991). We do not treat war collegeattendance like the other independent variables, regarding it instead as ascreening or interaction variable that specifies the pool from which generals willbe drawn.

Parents' EducationSocial class background, usually measured by parental education, is an essentialfeature of traditional models of status attainment. Here the father and motherare coded as having graduated from college or not. In addition, father is codedas having been a military officer or a West Point graduate himself.

BranchSome of the army branches (such as infantry and armor) in combat can bringcloser physical contact to an adversary than others (such as artillery, includingcoastal artillery, corps of engineers, signals, and ordnance) or the air force, andmay, therefore, attract men who are more aggressive and, therefore, may lookmore dominant. In addition, career chances may vary among branches orservices.

Analysis

We have nothing to add to Mazur, Mazur and Keating's (1984) results on earlypromotions, from West Point cadet officers up to the rank of major. Here we



Dow

nloaded from



analyze promotions to the middle and higher ranks: to lieutenant colonel andthe various grades of general. We restrict our analysis to the classmen in oursample who remained in the service for 20 years or more, i.e., to those whomade a life commitment to a military career. Nearly all (save four men)achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel or higher. Due to a lack of reliabledominance scores (see the discussion of face above) in 45 cases, we are left witha final sample of 289 career officers.

We recognize two aspects of promotion: (1) Does a man ever rise to ahigher rank? (2) If so, how quickly does he do it? The two aspects are connectedby the fact that in an organization in which promotion is based on merit, factorsthat make a promotion more or less likely may be the same as those thataccelerate or slow down the speed of promotion.

Mazur, Mazur and Keating (1984) compounded these two aspects bycomparing men who had attained different ranks by a given date (1964 and1980). We use a different analytical strategy here. In general, there are twoapproaches to investigating the dynamics of these military careers. In oneapproach we treat the major transitions in a military career separately. Forexample, the promotion from lieutenant colonel to colonel was a virtualcertainty for those who graduated from a war college. It was obtained by 53%of lieutenant colonels who did not. Being promoted to colonel for a nongraduateof war college is purely a reward — his career cannot proceed any further.Being admitted to war college, on the other hand, is not only a reward; it is aninvestment in that man. Less than half of the war college graduates, on theother hand, were promoted from colonel to brigadier general. Thus, eachpromotion poses different circumstances.

In the second approach, we investigate all of a man's promotions, countingfrom different base ranks onward; that is, we count total promotions above thelevel of colonel, brigadier general, etc. This can be justified on the grounds thatthe more capable a man is, the more often he will convince promotion boards,school selection boards, and command selection boards of his worth. Thus,subsequent promotions can be viewed as cumulative steps in one's careerprocess and may be treated as an interval measure of status attainment from agiven level.

Both approaches pose methodological problems.In the first approach, if we investigate each promotion independently, we

could model it as a transition process with two risks: promotion and retirement.The problem here is that the two risks are not independent, the censoringprocess — premature retirement — eventually depending on the distribution ofthe promotion risk. Officers are well aware of their chances of obtaining anotherpromotion.

A man of the class writes about the promotion to colonel: "You areconsidered each time the promotion board meets for the next rank. And, sincethe promotion board normally meets once a year, you are considered eachyear.... If you are passed over to lieutenant colonel or to colonel ... , in effect,you are dead. Forget the next two years.... For instance, the most commonpassover to colonel is caused by a poor efficiency report (maybe just "excellent"instead of a "max") as a battalion commander. Everything else was okay, or youwouldn't have made lieutenant colonel. During the next 2 years, nothing you



Dow

nloaded from



can do will change that lousy command OER (Officer Evaluation Record) inyour file. Your best bet: retire."

Another classman writes about the promotion to brigadier general: "Notonly is the promotion board to brigadier general given strict criteria, but allcolonels in the 'zone' are aware of the criteria which [are] always pub-lished.... I think I was competitive for brigadier general for about 1 year,during and just after my tour as XXX.... After the next board met, and Iwasn't selected, I knew that my chances were zero."

We may conclude from these statements that most men who retired beforethey reached the mandatory retirement age of their rank (28 years of service forlieutenant colonels, 30 years for colonels, 35 years for all grades of general) didso, among other reasons, because they — more or less correctly — assessed theirchances of promotion to be low. We may assume that they would have stayedlonger had their chance of promotion been better. On the other hand, manymen with little or no chances of promotion may have stayed until the endbecause of a lack of attractive alternatives. The interdependence of the two risksis, however, one-sided: the probability of premature retirement may have beeninfluenced by perceived promotion chances, but not vice versa. Actually, noneof the factors considered here as affecting chances of promotion on any levelwas a predictor for premature retirement.

The alternative, modeling the process as a one-risk process means effectivelytreating all men who were not promoted as if they had stayed until mandatoryretirement age. Since every man in a given rank is being considered forpromotion throughout several years, application of a mover-stayer model —assuming unobserved heterogeneity with respect to promotion chances —would be highly questionable, especially if we assume that, in the end, allmovers have moved and all stayers have stayed. On the other hand, neither isthe assumption plausible that all men are movers, some of whom, however,were not allowed to move but might have moved had the demand for officerson the next rank been greater at the time. Even in wartime there will always bea substantial proportion of men in any rank who will not be promoted further.Taking all things together, modeling career transitions as a process with twoindependent risks might be a lesser distortion of reality after all. In fact, theestimated factor effects were not different for the one-risk and the two-riskmodels.

A third possibility would be simply to compare all those who werepromoted with those who were not by a multivariate logistic regression model.By doing so we would circumvent the problems caused by the intricatecensoring process but would give away information about the time dimensionof the process: the speed of the career. As for many other life events, the samefactors that increase the chances of promotion may accelerate its occurrence.These factors also may increase the chances of subsequent promotions.

For the second. approach, the choice of an appropriate model is not obviouseither. Since, here, we are not interested any more in transitions from or to asingle state = rank, but rather in final career outcome, total number of subse-quent promotions, as seen from some rank level already achieved, would be thedependent variable. All possible promotions take place within a fairly similartime span — all promotions save one to brigadier general and 80% of all



Dow

nloaded from



promotions to major general took place before 1978, when lieutenant colonelshad to retire; all promotions save one to major general and 80% of all promo-tions to lieutenant general took place before 1980, when colonels had to retire;general officers of all ranks could stay until 1985. Thus, total number ofsubsequent promotions is a very good indicator not only of final outcome butalso of speed of career.

The appropriate model for analyzing these count data, however, is not apoint process (Cox & Isham 1980), because after any promotion there is anofficial minimum waiting time of two years (there may be exceptions for thehighest ranks), a substantial proportion of total average waiting time duringwhich no promotion can occur, but premature retirement can; and because thenumber of events that one person can experience is limited: no one can obtainpromotion beyond full general.

We chose the following strategies:We investigated single transitions with a two-risk (promotion and retire-

ment) model, but we look only into the factors affecting the risk of promotion.Reasons when to retire — see quotations above — may entail, in addition to theperceived promotion chances, a variety of factors from family situation to labormarket conditions that lie outside the focus of this study. In fact, none of thefactors considered in this study predicted time of retirement. Since the underly-ing time process (annual promotion board meetings) is discrete, there is notheoretical reason to prefer one parametric model over the other. In particular,there is no reason to assume that one parametric model is the appropriate onefor all transitions considered here. Therefore a proportional hazard rate modelas described by Cox (1972; Cox & Oakes 1984) is the model of choice. We willconsider graduation from war college, promotion from major to lieutenantcolonel (which all save four men in the sample obtained), from lieutenantcolonel to colonel, from colonel to brigadier general and from brigadier generalto major general. The last promotion is tantamount to accession to the militaryelite nucleus. The crucial condition of proportionality of the influence ofcovariates is fairly well fulfilled (see the discussion of results).

In addition, we compared with a logistic regression those who made thetransition with those who did not.

For analyzing the total number of promotions as seen from various ranksonward we simply chose multivariate OLS regression with the log of totalnumber of promotions as the dependent variable. For the interesting ranks(colonel with war college, brigadier general, major general — all lieutenantcolonels with war college became colonels, all without could not become more),the total number of promotions possible range from 0 to 4, 0 to 3, and 0 to 2,respectively. For that many levels in the dependent variable, OLS methods cangive sufficiently robust results (Bentler & Chou 1987).

Results

Measures of parental education including father's military background areunrelated to any career variable (same findings in Butler 1971b and Janowitz1971) and were therefore dropped from subsequent analysis.



Dow

nloaded from



TABLE 1: Correlations (Gamma) between Dichotomized IndependentVariables

Athletic General Friends War CollegeOrder of Merit

Face .11 .12 -.04 .01Athletic .12 -.17 .22General order of merit .05 -.42**Friends .06

(N - 289 to 334)

* p < .05 ** p < .001 (chi-squared test)

Career chances after graduation from war college were better for classmenin the air force than in the army (17 out of 27 became generals, as comparedwith 39 out of 113), perhaps because, in the post-Vietnam era, the air force wasnot cut back in size as much as the army. No variable considered here nor anyother data obtained in the survey predicted a man's entering the air force. Also,all effects on career dynamics reported below could be observed for air forceand army alike. Classmen who entered "combat" branches within the army(infantry, armor) had the same facial dominance scores as men opting for oneof the other army branches. No such differences could be observed among thosestill on active duty 20 years after West Point, nor among war college graduates,nor among generals. Likewise, career chances were equal for all army branches— a closely watched issue for officers and personnel planners anyway.Consequently, membership in a particular army branch or the air force wasdropped from further analysis.

Table 1 contains a correlation matrix of the remaining independent variablesusing gamma, which is insensitive to marginal distributions. Variables aredichotomized as indicated above or, in the case of GOM and face, at theirmedians. The only significant gamma is between GOM and war college,indicating that men with lower (i.e., better) GOM rankings were more likely tograduate from war college. Otherwise there is no multicollinearity to complicatethe interpretation of regression coefficients.

DISCRETE PROMOTIONS

Graduation from war college is a prerequisite for being promoted to generaland virtually guarantees promotion to colonel. Admission to war collegeeffectively separates officers into two career "channels" (a concept we havedeveloped elsewhere: Mazur & Mueller in press): the one eventually leading togeneral's stars, the other not.



Dow

nloaded from



TABLE 2: Coefficients of Dichotomous Covariates for Transition to Ranks fromRank Below and to War College Graduation according to theProportional Hazard Rate Model

Transition toMajor Lt. War Col.- Col.+ Brig. Major Lt. Genl.+

Coll. Genl.+ Gerd.+ Genl.+Grad.

Indicatorvariables

Face .02 .03 .08 -.21 .12 .25 .59 .30 1.44Athletic .03 -.01 .19 .32* .22* .18 .67 1.44 -1.73Generalorderof merit -.08 -.11* -36** -.18* -.04 -.27 .10 .45 -.68

Friends .03 .10 .08 .17 .38 .44 .60 .59 2.82

+ War college graduates only- Nongraduates of war college only*p<.05 **p<.001

Following our hypothesis that facial dominance might - deliberately or not- be regarded as an important factor for any high leadership position butirrelevant for "middle management" positions, we expect that face mayinfluence a man's chances to be admitted to war college, and for the sequenceof promotions from lieutenant colonel to four-star general in the channel openedby that admission, but may be irrelevant for the promotion from lieutenantcolonel to colonel for those men who did not go to war college.

Accordingly, proportional hazard rate models were estimated for admissionto war college and for promotion from major to lieutenant colonel for all menin the sample, and for all five promotions from lieutenant colonel to four-stargeneral in the channel for war college graduates. In addition, a proportionalhazard rate model was estimated for the promotion from lieutenant colonel tocolonel for those men who did not go to war college. Base line estimates weremade according to Breslow (1974); given the lack of a generally acceptedgoodness-of-fit test statistic for these models (Andersen et al. 1992:208-15;Fleming & Harrington 1991:92-94; Lin, Wei & Ying 1993; Lin & Wei 1991) weconfined ourselves to graphical testing (see below); the program was TDAwritten by Goetz Rohwer of the University of Bremen.

The effect of face in the channel for war college graduates is not significantfor any single transition, but the effect is always in the predicted positivedirection (sign test: p < .05). GOM while being a powerful predictor ofgraduation from war college, shows an inconsistent effect otherwise, as doesathletic.

Having had friends as a cadet displays the same consistently positive effecton transition rates as face in this channel. face, on the other hand, has no effecton promotion from lieutenant colonel to colonel in the other channel (seeTable 2).



Dow

nloaded from



TABLE 3: Survival Functions, Beginning in Year of First Observed Transition'

To Lieutenant War To ToColonel College Colonel- Colonel+

Year Sub. Dom. Sub. Dom. Sub. Dom. Sub. Dom.

1 .923 .942 1.000 .988 .991 .986 .986 .9732 .794 .785 1.000 .982 .991 .986 .709 .6953 .458 .434 1.000 .977 .991 .986 .525 .4154 .434 .427 .994 .970 .954 .986 .167 .1135 .111 .414 .965 .888 .935 .905 .080 .0386 .099 .101 .829 .809 .703 .650 .050 07 .034 .094 .728 .733 .425 .454 .0508 .016 .017 .665 .675 .391 .431 09 .020 .011 .622 .602 .391 .43110 * 0 .574 .584 .391 .43111 .565 .556 .391 .43112 * .534 .353 .35813 * *

Graduation from war college: all men serving for 20 years and more; promotions: allmen in rank below, calculated for actual risk population - excluding prematurelyretired men.Submissive (Sub.) - Face score at or below median;Dominant (Dom.) - face score above median.

+ War college graduates only- Nongraduates of war college only* No further transitions

The estimated survival functions for all five transitions in the career channelfor war college graduates, comparing men with face scores above the medianwith those below it, show that in every rank, at nearly every point in therespective interval, men with high face scores were subject to higher transitionrates than men with low scores (the difference between proportions survivingis monotonically increasing, as required by the proportional hazard rate model).Given the strong positive correlation between early promotion to a rank and thechances of another promotion, the differences between single survival functionseven understate the real advantage high face scores secured to men in this careerchannel. For promotion from major to lieutenant colonel, for admission to warcollege, and for promotion from lieutenant colonel to colonel for men who didnot attend war college, this does not apply (see Table 3).

In addition, we used logistic regression analysis of discrete promotions ofsingle transitions, comparing all those who experienced the transition with thosewho did not.

Since all save four men in the sample obtained promotion to lieutenantcolonel, and since graduation from war college virtually assured promotion to



Dow

nloaded from


To Brigadier To Major ToGeneral+b General+ Lieutenant

General+

Sub. Dom. Sub. Dom. Sub. Dom.

.985 .968 .963 1.000 .938 1.000

.924 .903 .704 .714 .938 .889

.833 .774 .587 .500 .813 .778

.724 .661 .547 .321 .750 .500

.712 .597 .508 .286 .600 .444

.636 .581 .469 .600

.621 .480* *

Year

12345678910111213

To General+

Sub. Dom.

.857 1.000* .700

.583

.467*


TABLE 3: Survival Function for Transition to Higher Rank and for Graduationfrom War College (Continued)

b Three distinguished professors at the academy or other military colleges were promotedbrigadier general upon retirement in the late 1980s. These promotions were notconsidered here.

colonel and is an essential step toward higher rank, at midcareer we focused onadmission to war college from any rank (usually lieutenant colonel). GOM is theonly independent variable significantly related to war college admission (logisticpartial correlation coefficient R = -.21, p = .001). Also, athletic (R = .13, p = .003) andGOM (R = -.07, p = .04) were moderately strong predictors of promotion tocolonel for men who did not attend war college. Neither face nor friends playedany role for these two transitions.

Since only war college graduates become generals, our regression forpromotion from colonel includes only men who graduated from war college(N = 140). Among these, only face is a significant predictor of promotion fromcolonel to brigadier general (R = .12, p = .05). Among brigadier generals, face isthe only predictor of promotion to major general that approaches significance(R = .12, p = .10, N = 51). The number of men at even higher ranks is too small toexpect significant effects, and there are none for promotion from major generalto lieutenant general (N = 31). However, for promotion from lieutenant generalto full general (N = 16), both face (R = .09, p = .13) and friends (R = .19, p = .09)approach significance.



Dow

nloaded from



NUMBER OF PROMOTIONS

Figure 2 shows the average number of promotions (from a base rank) as afunction of facial dominance. There are three curves, corresponding to threebase ranks: colonel, brigadier general, and major general. For example, the solidline shows the average number of subsequent promotions for colonels at eachvalue of face. Clearly, the more dominant a colonel's face, the more futurepromotions he enjoyed. The other curves give a similar picture. (No men withface values below 3 were promoted to general, so the graphs showing promo-tions from brigadier general and major general begin at face = 3.) The graphsshow men with face scores of 6 receiving .3 to .8 more promotions than menwith face scores of 3.

The number of promotions from the ranks of colonel, brigadier general, andmajor general was regressed on the independent variables. For example, for allmen who reached the base rank of colonel, we used OLS regression to predicttheir number of future promotions. Standardized coefficients (betas) and theirsignificance levels are shown for each base rank in Table 4. Since men who donot graduate from war college by the time they are colonels have no chance offurther promotion, we include only war college graduates in the regression fromthe base rate of colonel. Of 140 colonels who had graduated from war college,only 56 men reached brigadier general and 31 attained major general rank, andso significance tests are not equally powerful across these regressions.

Regression results in Table 4 vary considerably across base ranks. The samefour independent variables explain more variance (R 2) in promotions frombrigadier general and major general than in promotions from colonel.

Face is a strong and significant predictor of the number of promotions fromcolonel and becomes an even stronger predictor of future promotions forbrigadier generals. Face remains a sizable predictor of promotions from majorgeneral although there are only 31 subjects in this final regression.

Varsity athletics (athletic) approaches significance in predicting promotionsfrom brigadier general (ß = .24), but given the small number of brigadiergenerals, its effect does not reach significance (p = .07). It is neither a strong nora significant predictor of promotions from colonel or major general.

GOM has little predictive power when the promotion pool is limited to warcollege graduates. A reason could be that men with better GOM are more likelyto enter war college (Table 1), thus restricting the range of the variable. Thiseffect, however, if any, is weak: lower quartile and median and upper quartileof GOM for all classmen as well as for all lieutenant colonels was 48, 64, 83; forall war college graduates, 44, 58, 73; for all generals, 44, 57, 71.

Friends is a modest predictor of future promotions from all base ranks,significant or very nearly significant for promotions from colonel and brigadiergeneral. Considering the extreme crudity of this measure of sociability, it isnoteworthy that it shows any effect at all.

Together, the independent variables explain more variance in promotionsonce the pool is limited to war college graduates. While GOM loses its predic-tive power here, face and to a lesser degree friends become more important. Faceis a sufficiently strong predictor for the career potential of colonels and



Dow

nloaded from



FIGURE 2: Number of Promotions from Each Rank, by Fac?

Number ofsubsequent promotions

1,81,6

1,4

1,2

0,80,6

0,4

0,2

0

2 3 4 5 6

Facial Dominance Score

— Colonel

— - — • BrigadierGeneral

-- --- MajorGeneral

a 20+ years of service, war college graduates only. Values for face = 2, for face - 6 frombrigadier general, and for face - 3 and 6 from major general, are based on very smallsamples of size 4-9. Remaining values for brigadier general and major general, and forface - 6 from colonel, are based on samples of 10-19. Remaining values for colonel arebased on samples of 103.

brigadier generals that it reaches significance despite the small sample. Figure 2leaves little doubt that face is important in promotion from major general, too.

Event history analysis and logistic regression analysis of discrete promotionsare less powerful and show fewer significant effects than OLS analysis of totalpromotions, but the single event effects that do appear are consistent with OLSresults. Both point to GOM as an important predictor of admission to warcollege but not of later advancement within the pool of war college graduates.Both show face to be unimportant at middle rank, but after graduation from warcollege, both show face to be consistently the most important predictor of highrank.



Dow

nloaded from



TABLE 4: Ordinary Least Square Regressions for Number of Promotions (LogTransforms), from Base Rank, for War College Graduates'

Base Rank

Colonel Brigadier MajorGeneral General

Indicator variablesFace .16 .26 .23

(.06) (.05) (.22)

Athletic .11 .24 .18(.18) (.07) (.34)

General order of -.04 -.04 .14merit (.59) (.77) (.48)

Friends .17 .26 .21(.04) (.05) (.24)

RZ .09 .19 .19Model significance (.02) (.03) (.24)

N 118 51 31

a p values are in parentheses.

Discussion

Improved methods show that cadets' facial dominance, measured from theirWest Point graduation portraits, predicts military rank 20 years or more later.The finding is theoretically important in part because it allows us to evaluatehypotheses raised by Mazur, Mazur and Keating (1984) at the conclusion oftheir research.

First, we can reject any suggestion that dominant appearance in a gradua-tion portrait is the effect, rather than the cause, of attaining the status of cadetofficer while at West Point. The fact that these portraits correlate with rank 20+years later, as well as at West Point, while the status as cadet officer does notcorrelate with rank in late career (Mazur, Mazur & Keating 1984; see alsoJanowitz 1971), makes the causal direction unambiguous.

Second, we can also reject the hypothesis that in middle age, physicalfeatures lose their relevance for hierarchical placement.

Third, it was also hypothesized that face failed to predict future rankbecause middle-aged men no longer look like their graduation portraits. It iscertainly true that looks change with age. But since face does predict the highestlevel promotions, its failure to predict earlier promotions must be due to someother factor than the timeliness of the portrait. This conclusion is buttressed bya supplementary study of 30 classmen who provided us with portraits taken in



Dow

nloaded from



FIGURE 3: Facial Dominance by Performance Level

N-

Level 4 Level 3 Level 2 Level 1

performance level

Performance levels:

Level 4: no war college; final rank - lieutenant colonelLevel 3: no war college; final rank - colonelLevel 2: war college graduates; final rank - colonelLevel 1: war college graduates; final rank - general

middle age (average year = 1972) that could be compared to their cadet portraits(Mazur & Mueller 1993). Middle-age portraits were scored for dominance by thesame method used on the cadet portraits. Although poses, dress, and formats ofthe middle-age portraits are considerably more variable than those of cadetportraits, the correlation between dominance ratings of portraits taken 20 yearsapart is gamma = .44 (p = .04). Men who looked dominant as cadets tended tolook dominant in middle age as well. This finding accords with the stabilityover a lifetime reported for other facial impressions like babyfacedness andattractiveness (Zebrowitz & Montepare 1992; Zebrowitz, Olson & Hoffman1993).

Fourth, we can also discard the hypothesis that the absence of an effect offacial dominance on early and middle career is due to a sampling bias: that theuninterrupted effect of facial dominance was masked by the — on the average— greater facial dominance of West Point graduates than of their far morenumerous competitors who obtained their commission elsewhere.



Dow

nloaded from



Apparently the percentage of West Point graduates among war collegegraduates was not much lower than the percentage of West Point graduatesamong generals: that is, in the 40-50% range (Atkinson 1989, quoting officialsources; Moore & Trout 1978). On the other hand, for the men in our sample,the most restrictive filter in the long sequence of career steps was admission towar college: of those eligible, only 39% passed it (only the last filter of all, theone to full general, with a 35% chance for those eligible, was even harder topass). If facial dominance were important also in midcareer, then, even if WestPointers look more dominant than other candidates, its effect should havebecome visible in our sample, at least at the transition to war college. Since itwas not, we conclude that the effect existed only at the academy and at the topof the hierarchy.

This leads us to favor the remaining hypothesis, that facial appearance is aleadership quality that is more important for some promotions than for othersbecause it signals qualifications that are more important for winning in primarygroup contests. Consequently, it should be more important when thoserecommending promotion know the candidate personally. Such is the case bothat West Point, where the decision is based on evaluations by cadets and tacticalofficers, and in promotion to the highest ranks, attained by a few men towardthe end of their careers, when the small pool of candidates is again personallyknown to those in judgment. At midcareer, their physical appearance is not animportant factor compared to their records, even though the portraits accompa-ny promotion files.

Academic attainment, as measured by GOM, is the only one of our fourindependent variables that is conventionally regarded as an important deter-minant of promotion in merit-based bureaucracies, which the modern militarycertainly is. It is puzzling that at the highest ranks, this indicator of technocraticcompetence loses its prior relationship to promotion. Since the range of GOM isonly slightly restricted by the sequence of filters in this channel, we mayconclude that after graduation from war college, for high positions in thehierarchy, leadership qualifications not measured by GOM become moreimportant. At the same time, factors that seemingly ought to be irrelevant in ameritocracy — facial dominance, athletics, and friendliness — increase theirrelationship to promotion.

The best-measured of our four independent variables, GOM, is based onfour years of college achievement, yet it is unrelated to promotion to the highestranks. In contrast, the other variables are operationalized in ways that seembarely adequate: face is measured from a yearbook portrait taken 20 or moreyears before the highest rank is attained; friends is coded from a 50-word profileof each cadet in the yearbook; and athletic measures some ambiguous combina-tion of physique, athletic prowess, team spirit, and in the case of lacrosse orfootball, school glory. It is remarkable that they relate to anything, yet these arethe variables most predictive of final promotions. It is a compelling hypothesisthat improved measures of these variables would produce far strongerrelationships than are reported here. If true, then the effect of these variables onpromotion is substantial.



Dow

nloaded from



What is the social mechanism behind the positive effect of facial appearanceon status attainment at the academy and at high levels of the military hierarchy,but not at the low and middle levels?

Virtually all studied species of nonhuman primates use facial gestures tosignal social status (dominance and submissiveness) (Smuts et al. 1987). Thesegestures help to regulate relationships among conspecifics by settling conflictswithout violence or with limited violence. Homologous human facial gestureshave been shown to exist and to be reliably and uniformly interpreted in manycultures (Keating, Mazur & Segall 1981a, 1981b). Characteristically, conflicts ofall sorts are settled by an escalation of warnings, threats and the application offorce with increasing intensity: the outcome is decided once one of the contes-tants decides not to move up the escalation ladder any further. Conflictresolution thus crucially depends on the perception and credibility of escalationthreats. Cues for the credibility of escalation threats may be called signals.

Facial dominance as analyzed in this study seems to signal the potential foras well as the intention of escalation (for a detailed discussion of facialdominance as a biological signal see Mueller & Mazur 1995; see also Mazur1985): strong jaws may indicate a heavily built skeleton, and therefore superiorphysical strength. A broad prominent forehead with strong eyebrow arches mayindicate enhanced ability to absorb hits. The conventional signals that can befound in dominant looking faces seem to include several gestures observed inmany nonhuman primates and humans as well when preparing for a fight(Harper 1991): thin lips, withdrawn corners of the mouth, lowered eyebrowswith partially closed eyes (in order to protect them against injuries), withdrawnears, making them appear smaller. Conversely, people with facial featurestypical of infants (large eyes, high thin eyebrows, round face, small nose bridges— "babyfacedness") are perceived as warmer, weaker, submissive (Berry 1990).Babyfaced people describe themselves as less aggressive (Berry 1991). Atpresent, however, our knowledge is very limited about the functional contribu-tion of such anatomical and gestural features to the overall perception of facialdominance. Also, for our sample we have only the scores of perceived facialdominance from the ratings.

Our data suggest that facial dominance did not function as a relevantqualification for junior or middle rank positions nor for admission to warcollege (as Collins & Zebrowitz 1995 in a small sample of men who had servedin the military for some years — mainly from age 20 to age 25 — found nocorrelation between babyfacedness and number of promotions), but did sofunction for promotion to cadet ranks at the academy and for promotion to thetop positions in the military hierarchy. There must be some relation betweendominant looks and the abilities it signals. If the selection of persons for animportant position is made dependent on many sensible indicators for compe-tence, then adding a criterion that is completely uncorrelated with competencewill inevitably decrease the average quality of the selection. Therefore, ifselection to the top ranks is made also on grounds of perceived facial domi-nance, facial dominance must be a useful feature of a cadet or a general.

These findings still leave room for various interpretations of the socialmeaning of this set of basically biological signals, which evolved in an envi-ronment of long ago.



Dow

nloaded from



Typically, conflicts within modern organizations are not decided by threator application of physical force; such behavior is severely sanctioned. Therefore,along the line of the "novel environment" approach (Barkow, Cosmides &Tooby 1992), it could be argued that while there is a universal, even biological,basis for facial dominance signals, in the social reality of modern meritocraticorganizations they carry some other meaning.

Perhaps promotions into the military elite, the top levels of the hierarchy,go preferentially to those who present themselves as tough warriors, even if themanagement of modern warfare requires quite different abilities. Embodyingthe ideals of the hierarchy in such a direct way may also help to prevail inprimary group contests within the organization. This would be an applicationof Moore and Trout's (1978) "visibility" theory in a symbolic interactionisttradition: Using a biological communication channel in order to send aculturally mediated message, men present themselves in conformity with thevalues of the established hierarchy that they want to join. Several empiricalfindings in our sample, however, make it difficult to defend this interpretation.

Such an interpretation first must assume that, in this particular professionalgroup, facial appearance is prized and possibly rewarded. This much definitelyis the case — to men in our sample the findings of this study neither came asa surprise nor as an offense (see also the opening discussion of this article).

On the other hand, a smile, in particular a broad smile, decreases the facialdominance score awarded by raters and, therefore, probably decreases per-ceived facial dominance, too. Mazur, Mazur and Keating (1984) found thatbroad smile (with teeth visible) decreased facial dominance score by 0.7 points(see the discussion of variables). The portraits in the graduation yearbook werewell prepared and carefully taken, and furthermore, we may assume that, as inother American colleges, graduates had a chance to select their portraits forpublication from several photos taken. We should then expect that ambitiousmen, those who had already attained a cadet officer rank, as well as those whowanted to rise high, were more inclined to present themselves on the portraitsto be as dominant as possible and therefore should have avoided posing orselecting portraits with a broad smile altogether. There were however, nodifferences in the distribution of broad smiles over cadet ranks. Cadet officersdisplayed broad smile not less frequently than cadet sergeants (see Table 5).Likewise, there was no difference between future officer ranks: future lieutenantcolonels, colonels, and generals all had displayed broad smiles in roughly thesame numbers (see Table 6).

Also, if facial dominance of cadets as measured here indicates an indivi-dual's conformity with the values of the hierarchy, then, in addition, we shouldexpect a correlation with GOM in the predicted direction, which could not beobserved (Table 1).

In addition, presentation of oneself as being in conformity with the valuesof the hierarchy is a feature that will be valued for all promotions. If facialdominance is valued as indicating a candidate's devotion to the values of themilitary hierarchy, then, by all that we know about socialization in professionsand organizations, we should expect that facial dominance should also influenceone's chances for promotion during early and middle career. Candidates haveto provide portraits, which are included in the files open to inspection by



Dow

nloaded from



TABLE 5: Smiling in Portraits of Men by Cadet Ranks in Senior Year'

No or BroadSlight Smile Smile

Cadet rank

Captain 30 10 (25%)Lieutenant 84 28 (25%)Sergeant 412 105 (20%)All 526 142 (21%)

(N-669)

` Data from Howitzer

promotion boards for all ranks. Again, the most ambitious candidates shouldhave provided more dominant portraits in order to advertise their adherence tothe values of the hierarchy, and it should have worked. If, besides smile, officialportraits leave a man only little room for varying his facial dominance, then,given the stability of facial dominance scores through the life course, we shouldexpect a positive effect of facial appearance as rated from the graduationportraits, on promotions throughout the whole career, which could not beobserved. But if an officer, anticipating the expectations of promotion boards,can substantially vary his facial appearance on official portraits, why shouldportraits in early and mid career, but not in late career, differ in this respectfrom the portraits taken at the academy?

Therefore we are left with the alternative interpretation: that facial domi-nance also in the context of the modern military measures what the raters wereasked to assess: the capability to actually dominate other people, even if thisability in the social context must be applied only in a subtle and purelysymbolic way.

There are many instances of contests, both intraspecific and interspecificones, where it pays to fake. All other things being equal, an intruder often willdefer to the owner of a territory who has already invested in it and for whomit is more valuable; a well-fed individual will defer to a hungry one. Thisshould be beneficial to both sides, if such differences in intentions and interestsare honestly signaled in order to avoid costly fighting. But there is the option tofake: pretend ownership or hunger. But then, why should an opponent believesuch a signal?

When it comes to signaling relative contest abilities within a rank order,first Zahavi (1977), and in two rigorous papers Grafen (1990) and Enquist (1985)— see also Hasson (1994) — showed with game theoretical models that honestycan be an evolutionarily stable strategy: a strategy that in any real context willdisplace alternative strategies and cannot be displaced by them. There is onlyone condition for this finding to hold: the signaling itself must be costly and it



Dow

nloaded from



TABLE 6: Smiling in Portraits of Men by Future Final Rank (LieutenantColonel Rank and Above)'

No or Broad

Final rank Slight Smile Smile

General 43 14 (25%)Colonel 173 55 (24%)Lieutenant colonel 112 27 (19%)All 328 96 (23%)

(N-424)

Data from Howitzer and The Register

must be more costly to signalers who actually are less able to fight. Severalexperimental observations are consistent with this prediction: for example,subdominant male house sparrows with experimentally enlarged badges(a signal of dominance) are attacked by birds with naturally large badges morefrequently than other subdominant individuals (Moller 1987).

Among humans, signaling a contest ability that does not exist can also bepunished very effectively. Many communities where rank is formally signaledby uniforms, titles, badges, etc., have strict punishment for fakers; there areequally harsh sanctions against individuals who informally signal a higher rankthan they actually have.

In our sample, there are clear hints that signaling facial dominance withoutfulfilling the according expectations indeed was costly. Among men who didnot graduate from war college and who had a GOM score in the poorer half(above 72), of all factors considered here facial dominance together with GOMwas the most potent predictor for promotion to colonel, but — unlike GOM —a negative one (R = -.13, p = .04, N = 76); •neither athletic nor friends had an effectin this particular subgroup. The higher the facial dominance score, the lower thechances for promotion to the highest rank obtainable for that subgroup (lowgrades at the academy; no war college), which in terms of professionalperformance was the weakest quarter of the whole sample. Some of these men,had they looked less dominant, might have risen higher than they actually did.Survival function differences in Table 3, while not approaching significance,accordingly speak more for a negative rather than a positive impact of facialdominance on chances of becoming colonel for nongraduates of war college ingeneral.

Also, if we look only at final rank, while facial dominance scores rose frommedium performers (colonel, no war college) over good performers (colonelswho had graduated from war college) to top performers (generals), those menwho did not graduate from a war college and were never promoted beyondlieutenant colonel looked almost as dominant as generals (see Figure 3).



Dow

nloaded from



It is interesting that, in this low-performing subgroup, year of promotion tolieutenant colonel highly correlated with facial dominance: the higher the facialdominance score, the later this last promotion had occurred (Spearman r = .37,p - .001). This was the only instance in this data set in which a strong significantrelation could be observed between facial appearance score and a parameter ofcareer timing.

We may conclude from these observations that if a man visibly failed tomeet the expectations of his superiors and peers — that a West Point graduateexcels in professional performance — and instead displayed only modestcapabilities, then looking like a dominant military leader was a handicap ratherthan an asset. Parallels can be seen in that babyfaced individuals, who generallyare perceived as warm, dependent and submissive, receive harsher punishmentfor wrongdoing (Berry & Zebrowitz-McArthur 1988; Zebrowitz, Kendall-Tackett& Fafell 1991). Furthermore, our finding is another strong piece of evidenceagainst the "visibility" hypothesis: presenting oneself as conforming with thevalues of the hierarchy should never be a handicap.

Here we have the relative costs of overstating one's contest abilities that thetheory requires for honest signaling as an evolutionarily stable strategy. Thus,facial dominance, as measured by the raters and perceived by the promotionboards, rather than being a symbol for something else, is perceived also in thecontext of a military career as honestly signaling individual contest capabilities;higher facial dominance scores indicating a greater probability to win in acontest against men with lower scores. In midcareer, at the ranks of lieutenantcolonel and colonel, expertise, cognitive competence, and social intelligence arethe required leadership qualities. On the top levels of the military hierarchymore archaic features of leadership matter, too. Selecting cadet officers at theacademy also by the criterion face can be seen as a purposeful preparation forthat dimension of leadership.

Is the military, with its warrior traditions, unique in its attention todominant physical features? Perhaps, but there is reason to think that militarypromotion understates physical effects. Because of selective recruitment andsocialization, West Point cadets look physically more impressive in face,physique, and posture than do students at other universities, and the same maybe said of military officers compared to civilian professionals. Thus, there is lessvariation in appearance among military than among nonmilitary populations,and therefore less opportunity for physical selection into the highest status.Collins and Zebrowitz's (1995) finding — that babyfacedness, height and weightmay have a greater impact on status attainment in civilian than in militarysettings — may be due to this sampling effect.

Furthermore, height, which is correlated with status in some civilianpopulations (Frieze, Olson & Good 1990; Gillis 1982; Hensley & Cooper 1987),was purposefully dissociated from rank at West Point, where in the 1940s cadetswere assigned to companies according to their height, some companiesconsisting of tall men and others of short men, a practice since discontinued.Because promotions at West Point are purposefully distributed nearly equallyacross the cadet companies, the effect in those days was to distribute promo-tions across heights as well. Once the cadets graduated, height was no longerexplicitly constrained from being a factor in promotion, but some implicit



Dow

nloaded from



constraint may have persisted since the height of classmen did not correlatewith their ranks in later career either (Mazur, Mazur & Keating 1984). Con-sidering all these factors, we believe that the effects of physical features onpromotion are relatively understated in our military population. We predict thatcivilian institutions such as church hierarchies will show stronger physicaleffects on promotion.

If physical features are important determinants of socioeconomic status inthe general population, then their incorporation into sociological models ofstatus attainment would add considerable power. Methodologically this isfeasible, since we have shown that photographs taken decades years apart canbe scored with similar reliability for facial dominance. Trained interviewerscould photograph respondents as part of the interview.

Since physical features are heritable, they may explain some persistence instatus from one generation to the next. If one's parents attained high (or low)status partially through their looks, then by inheriting a similar look, one oughtto be biased toward similar status attainment. Possibly controlling for lookswould substantially lessen the traditional correlation between the social statusof parents and their children. In our sample, however, military background offather had no impact on career chances (see the discussion of results) and,therefore, can be excluded as the underlying cause of the positive effect of facialdominance.

We believe it likely that there are interactions involving looks, race, andstatus attainment. For example, a dominant-looking black male in a whitemajority society might suffer inordinate suppression because he looks threat-ening, whereas a submissive-looking black man, by looking less intimidating,might be trusted more in business or school. For whites, who are not subject tofearful discrimination, dominant looks would facilitate upward mobility.Adding physical appearance to traditional models of status attainment wouldopen wholly new possibilities for explanation.

References

Andersen, Per Kragh, O. Borgan, RD. Gill, and N. Keiding. 1992. Statistical Models Based onCounting Processes. Springer.

Atkinson, R 1981. "Blood Brothers. The West Point Class of '66." Kansas City Times, 17 Nov._.1989. The Long Gray Line. Houghton MifflinBarkow, Jerome H., L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby. 1992. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology

and the Generation of Culture. Oxford University Press.Bentler, P., and C. Chou. 1987. "Practical Issues in Structural Modeling." Sociological Methods

and Research 16:78-118.Berry, DS. 1990. "Taking People at Face Value: Evidence for the Kernel of Truth Hypothesis."

Social Cognition 8:343-61._. 1991. "Accuracy in Social Perception: Contribution of Facial and Vocal Information."

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 61:298-307.Berry, D.S., and L.A. Zebrowitz-McArthur. 1986. "Perceiving Character in Faces: The Impact of

Age-Related Cranio-Facial Changes on Social Perception." Psychological Bulletin 100:3-18.



Dow

nloaded from



Berscheid, E., and E. Walster. 1974. "Physical Attractiveness." Pp. 157-215 in Advances inExperimental Social Psychology. Vol. 7, edited by Leonard Berkowitz. Academic Press.

Blau, Peter, and Otis D. Duncan. 1967. American Occupational Structure. Wiley.

Breslow, N. 1974. "Covariance Analysis of Censored Survival Data." Biometrics 30:89-99.Butler, RP. 1971a. "Official Reasons for Separations from Active Duty of USMA Graduates

from the Classes of 1942 through 1966." Office of Institutional Research, US. MilitaryAcademy.

_.1971b. "Survey of Careerists and Non-Careerists from the USMA Classes of 1963-1967."Office of Institutional Research, US. Military Academy.

_. 1976. "Relationships between College Performance and Success as an Army Officer."Journal of Vocational Behavior 9385-91.

Child, Irwin. 1950. "The Relation of Somatotype to Self-Ratings on Sheldon's TemperamentalTraits." Journal of Personality 18:440-53.

Collins, MA., and L.A. Zebrowitz. 1995. "The Contributions of Appearance to OccupationalOutcomes in Civilian and Military Settings." Journal of Applied Social Psychology 25:129-63.

Cortes, Juan, and Florence Gatti. 1972. Delinquency and Crime. Seminar.Cox, David Roxbee. 1972. "Regression Models and Life-Tables." Journal of the Royal Statistical

Society 34:187-220.Cox, D.R., and V. Isham.1980. Point Processes. London: Chapman & Hall.Cox, D.R., and D. Oakes.1984. Analysis of Survival Data. London: Chapman & Hall.Enquist, M. 1985. "Communication during Aggressive Interactions with Particular Reference to

Variations in Choice of Behaviour." Animal Behaviour 33:1152-61.Fleming, Thomas R., and David P. Harrington. 1991. Counting Processes and Survival Analysis.

Wiley.Frieze, I.H., J.E. Olson, and D.C. Good. 1990. "Perceived and Actual Discrimination in the

Salaries of Male and Female Managers." Journal of Applied Social Psychology 20:46-67.Gillis, John. 1982. Too Tall Too Small. Institute for Personality and Ability Testing.Cowin, Enoch Burton.1915. The Executive and His Control of Men. Macmillan.Grafen, A. 1990. "Biological Signals as Handicaps." Journal of Theoretical Biology 144:517-46.Guthrie, Russell Dale. 1976. Body Hot Spots. Van Nostrand Reinhold.Harper, D.G.C. 1991. "Communication." Pp. 374-96 in Behavioural Ecology, edited by J.R. Krebs

and N.B. Davies. Oxford: Blackwell.Hasson, 0.1994. "Cheating Signals." Journal of Theoretical Biology 167:223-38.Hatfield, Elaine, and Susan Sprecher. 1986. Mirror, Mirror: The Importance of Looks in Everyday

Life. SUNY Press.Hensley, W.E., and R Cooper. 1987. "Height and Occupational Success: A Review and a

Critique." Psychological Reports 60:843-49.The Howitzer. 1950. U.S. Military Academy.Janowitz, Morris. 1971. The Professional Soldier. Free Press.Keating, C., Allan Mazur, and M. Segall. 1981a. "A Cross-cultural Exploration of Physiognomic

Traits of Dominance and Happiness." Ethology and Sociobiology 2:41-48._.1981b. "Culture and the Perception of Social Dominance from Facial Expression." Journal

of Personality and Social Psychology 40:615-26.Lin, D.Y., and L.J. Wei. 1991. "Goodness-of-Fit Tests for the General Cox Regression Model."

Statistica Sinica 1:1-17.Lin, D.Y., L.J. Wei, and Z. Ying. 1993. "Checking the Cox Model with Cumulative Sums of

Martingale-Based Residuals." Biometrika 80:557-72.



Dow

nloaded from



Mazur, Allan. 1985. "A Biosocial Model of Status in Face-to-Face Primate Groups." Social Forces64:377402.

Mazur, Allan, J. Mazur, and C. Keating. 1984. "Military Rank Attainment of a West Point Class:Effects of Cadets' Physical Features." American Journal of Sociology 90:125-50.

Mazur, Allan, and Ulrich Mueller. 1993. "Persistence of Facial Dominance Measured fromPortraits Taken Twenty Years Apart." Manuscript.

—. N.d. "Channel Modeling: From West Point Cadet to General." Public AdministrationReview. In press.

Mazur, Allan, and Leon Robertson. 1972. Biology and Social Behavior. Free Press.Moller A.P.1987. "Social Control of Deception among Status Signaling House Sparrows Passer

Domesticus." Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 20:307-11.Moore, D., and B. Trout. 1978. "Military Achievement: The Visibility Theory and Promotion."

American Political Science Review 72:452-68.Mueller, Ulrich. 1991. Social and Reproductive Success: Theoretical Considerations and a Case Study

of the West Point Gass of 1950. Mannheim, Ger.: ZUMA.Mueller, Ulrich, and Allan Mazur. 1995. "Facial Dominance in Male Homo Sapiens as Honest

Signaling." Manuscript.Patzer, Gordon. 1985. The Physical Attractiveness Phenomena. Plenum Press.Register of Graduates and Former Cadets. 1964,1980,1991. Association of Graduates, US. Military

Academy.Sheldon, William Herbert. 1942. The Varieties of Temperament. Harper & Row.Smuts, Barbara B., D.L. Cheney, R.M. Seyfarth, R.W. Wrangham, and T.T. Struhsaker. 1987.

Primate Societies. University of Chicago Press.Stogdill, Ralph Melvin. 1974. Handbook of Leadership. Free Press.Truscott, Lucian K., Jr. 1978. Dress Gray. Fawcett Crest.Zahavi, A.1977. "The Cost of Honesty." Journal of Theoretical Biology 67:603-5.Zebrowitz, L.A., K. Kendall-Tackett, and J. Fafel. 1991. "The Influence of Children's Facial

Maturity on Parental Expectations and Punishments." Journal of Experimental ChildPsychology 52:221-38.

Zebrowitz, L.A., and J. Montepare. 1992. "Impressions of Babyfacedness and Attractivenessacross the Life Span." Developmental Psychology 28:1143-52.

Zebrowitz, L.A., K. Olson, and K. Hoffman. 1993. "Stability of Babyfacedness and Attractive-ness across the Life Span." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64:453-66.



Dow

nloaded from


Facial Dominance of West Point Cadets as a Predictor of Later ...

Documents

Transcript of Facial Dominance of West Point Cadets as a Predictor of Later ...