By IANS,
Washington : Pictures of baby-faced chief executives evoke a more favourable response than mature looking ones when companies face a minor crisis in public relations (PR), says a new study.
The study has found that the contours of the chief executive officer’s (CEO’s) face could be the key to damage control during such a crisis in a corporation.
Participants in the exercise equated baby-faced CEOs having large eyes, small nose, high forehead and small chin.
However, in more serious situations, especially involving questions of competence, a baby-faced CEO didn’t help the company, the study added.
In the study, participants examined news accounts of fictitious corporate misdeeds and the subjects perceived baby-faced CEOs as more honest.
So, what do the authors of the study advise?
“While there is no panacea for a company suffering a PR crisis, putting the right face on a response might just help save some face.”
“A company can control what face is put on the crisis, and (our) research suggests that the face shape of this person is not a trivial consideration,” said authors Gerald J. Gorn, Yuwei Jiang (both Hong Kong University), and Gita V. Johar (Columbia University).
“In contexts where innocence conveys naïveté, a mature face is evaluated more favourably,” wrote the authors. For example, if a company failed to detect important defects in products, the baby-faced CEO was perceived to be detrimental.
The research also found that the “baby-face effect” is unconscious, and that when participants were distracted (by memorising a number) the baby face had greater influence.
The unconscious nature of baby-face effects has not previously been shown in other research. The authors also demonstrate that the association between baby-faced people and honesty can be overcome by showing participants pictures of supposed criminals with baby faces.
The new research has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research.