Predictably competitive? What faces can tell us about competitive behavior

Abstract

Competition for limited resources is ubiquitous in social and economic life and has sparked a large body of research on the determinants of competitive behavior. While we know a lot about the role of contextual factors and personality traits, the potential link between competitive behavior and physical appearance remains unexplored. In this study we test whether objective facial characteristics and subjective attractiveness ratings are related to the competitive behavior in the form of opting for a tournament payment scheme in a real-effort task. We find no association for any of the examined characteristics. Nevertheless, we show that individuals are significantly better than chance at predicting the competitiveness of experimental participants, just by looking at their headshots. These findings advance our understanding of the role of observable physical characteristics as telltale signs of behavior.