Could your face be your passport to the top of the tree? We know from studies that interviewers tend to make “irrational” judgments about job candidates’ suitability based on first impressions, but new research actually seems to link managers’ phizogs with the success of their organisations.

The human brain is attuned to the subtleties of facial layout, and the development of screen culture seems to have strengthened the effect of this primordial prejudice. For example, no bald US president has been elected since the advent of television.

The latest study, by Tufts University in next month’s Psychological Science, claims that performance levels of top US companies can be related to the first impressions made by their chief executive officers’ faces. Using photographs of the highest and lowest ranked chief execs of Fortune 1000 companies, two psychologists, Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady, asked college students to say which of the pictured faces were characteristic of a business leader.

By rating the faces on competence, dominance, likeability, facial maturity and trustworthiness, the students were able to distinguish between the successful and the not-so-successful head honchos. The portrait shots had been made to look as similar as possible, but still the students’ ratings significantly matched them to company profits.

The authors suggest that face-spotting could be as accurate a way of predicting share performance as conventional economic study.

But what could the students have spotted? It might be quite simple: dominance, or, as it’s often also known, testosterone. Men and women with high testosterone levels tend to have more prominent features. So here’s a lucrative tip: whether investing in shares or paying for plastic surgery, perhaps it’s best to buy strong chins.

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