In his seminal essay ‘Smile’ the noted MIT Professor, Alan Lightman described how the complex social interplay between a man and a woman is facilitated by one simple facial display (Lightman, 1996). The contraction of the bilateral risorius and zygomaticus muscle groups, which together connect the corners of the lips to the zygomatic arch, results in a characteristic smile display. The subsequent perception of this display can drive a range of behaviours in the immediate social group. In the Lightman essay, such behaviour took the form of a man moving closer to a woman to engage in conversation. However, this was more than a mere romantic tale; it was a forensic examination into the possible biological mechanisms that drive social behaviour in others. We now know that the smile also conveys information about the type of leader you are (Senior, Barnes, et al. 1999; Senior, Phillips, Barnes, & David, 1999) and different types of smiles can even facilitate specific types of social behaviour that drive various leadership attributions such as affiliation or dominance (Rychlowska et al., 2017). Yet even armed with such a detailed analysis Lightman concludes with the admission that he cannot answer the most fundamental of all questions—and that is why does such social behaviour occur after perceiving certain displays.

There is no doubt that the human face both inspires and intrigues. From Boticcelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ to Warhol’s study of Marilyn Monroe the artistic community has been quick to embrace this intrigue. There are many reasons why the human face holds a privileged role in our canon of artistic expression (see, e.g., Carroll & Russell, 1997; Jones, 2006). Thanks to the work of noted scholars such as Paul Ekman , James Russell, Andrew Young, and many others, we now understand how the musculature surrounding various facial features can contract to display and communicate complex internal states such as anger, surprise, or happiness (Ekman, 1992). The study of emotional displays is indeed a fruitful area of research endeavour, but the human face is a far more complex vector than this and communicates a vast and rich repertoire of social processes that go beyond merely showing people how you feel.

The perception of leadership traits in others is an important social process that can also be garnered from certain facial displays (Antonakis & Eubanks, 2017; van Vugt & Grabo, 2015). Such is the efficacy of this display system that even a slight head tilt, which would alter the perceived angle of a neutral facial display, can have a significant effect on the subsequent perception of social dominance (Mignault & Chaudhuri, 2003). We are very good at using the face to detect leaders, indeed in very short period of time observers can process various facial displays and make accurate inferences as to leadership effectiveness (Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005; Willis & Todorov, 2006, see also, Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2005). This ability is not learned or trained and is also present in young children who are able to correctly detect successful political leaders (Antonakis & Dalgas, 2009; see also Keating & Bai, 1986).¹ The less tangible evidence an observer has on the effectiveness of an individual’s leadership abilities, the more they tend to rely on facial cues to make leadership judgements (Antonakis & Jacquart, 2013). It would seem that we may have an innate ability to perceive leadership via facial cues and also use these displays as a form of heuristic mechanism to enable veridical judgements to quickly take place.

The importance of facial displays in the communication of leadership is unsurprising given that the leader-follower relationship is a fundamental human process that occurs in most human societies (King, Johnson, & van Vugt, 2009).² From a sociobiological perspective, delay in the assessment of leadership abilities in others would impact the effectiveness of group decisions and as a result may bring significant costs to the welfare of the group in subsequent access to resources, and so on (Conradt & Roper, 2007). Indeed, human social groups benefit from being able to communicate leadership effectively by taking advantage of a highly complex facial musculature that has evolved to enable the communication of a vast range of social processes (Schmidt & Cohn, 2001; See also Thompson, 1891 for an interesting perspective). Yet, there still remain a number of questions that need to be addressed before it is possible to converge on a complete understanding of the relationship between the human face and perception of leadership. Is there a single facial display that communicates leadership more effectively than others or do various displays operate in synchrony to provide a more holistic and effective display? In other words is the signal property of this behavioural phenotype facilitated by a specific component of the face or is it driven by a larger configural effect involving several components? Given that there is evidence of cross cultural recognition of facial displays of basic emotions (Ekman, Sorenson, & Friesen, 1969; Ekman & Friesen, 1971) and even more complex emotional states such as shame and pride (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008) can the face transmit a universally recognized signal property or is it culturally bound? The possibility that recognition of such displays may be innate does indeed raise the tantalizing possibility that there may be a universally recognized facial display of leadership?

The purpose of this chapter is therefore twofold. First an initial model is developed that identifies and describes a group of facial displays that convey leadership. Here a systematic review of the literature was carried out to arrive at these characteristics. This review was based firmly within the sociobiological model and its primary focus were the so-called honest signals that convey leadership from the face.

This chapter also serves to introduce the book that you are holding and to describe the contribution that each of the chapters has made towards our understanding of the state of the union between facial displays and leadership. As you will see it is clear that we have been fortunate to have renowned experts in the field contribute to the text. Individually each chapter stands alone as a significant contribution. But when they are considered together their respective contributions to our understanding of this area become more evident. These contributions present a research framework for the study of the facial displays of leadership—a manifesto for future research.

To begin, a straightforward, yet quite complex, question is first addressed with a review of the literature.

The first stage of the systematic literature review procedure was to identify keywords related to leadership and facial displays (see Table 1.1). The keywords were divided into primary and secondary search terms. Primary search terms referred to the synonyms derived from the key phrases ‘Facial displays’ and ‘Leader/s’, while the secondary terms were taken from the synonym list derived from the word ‘Leadership’. Secondary search terms were thus associated around the psychology/behaviour of leadership and not directly related to the facial displays of leaders per se. The search strings were applied to two search engines (EBESCO/PsychArticles and the Thomson ...