email may affect your recipient’s
perceived email pressure and state
of well-being.
MacKinnon presented these findings
at the British Psychological Society’s
Division of Occupational Psychology
annual conference on January 7, 2016.
Shutterstock.com/lassedesignen
—Lisa Cunningham
Leadership with Muscle
When you consider the qualities a
good leader embodies, words like
“honest,” “committed” and “eloquent”
likely come to mind.
One word that probably doesn’t make
your list: “muscular.”
However, new research from the
University of California, Berkeley’s, Haas
School of Business shows that physical
strength matters when it comes to
people’s perception of leaders.
Study participants in a series of
experiments conducted by Cameron
Anderson, a UC Berkeley professor of
management, and Aaron Lukaszewski,
an assistant professor at Oklahoma
State University, overwhelmingly
equated physical strength with higher
status and leadership qualities.
In one experiment, groups of men
and women were shown photos of
“The physically strong men in the pictures
were given higher status because they
are perceived as leaders,” Anderson said.
In another experiment, the researchers
used photo-editing software to switch
the bodies of strong and weak subjects
(e.g., depicting a weak man’s head
on a strong man’s body). Participants
rated the weak men with stronger,
superimposed bodies higher in status
and leadership qualities.
The final experiment focused on height
differences, with participants indicating
their perception that men of taller
stature had more strength; as in the
other experiments, they were also rated
higher in leadership and status.
The phenomenon doesn’t appear to
apply to women: There was little effect
on participants’ perception of leadership
skills when they were shown physically
strong versus weak women.
“Perceived strength does give people an
advantage, but it’s not make or break,”
Anderson said. “If you’re behaving in
ways that demonstrate you are a leader
or not a leader, strength doesn’t matter.”
Anderson and Lukaszewski’s paper is
forthcoming in the Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology.
—Abby Tripp Heverin
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