No Surprise Here

For those who are unaware that the human species is a social species with clear hierarchies based on easily discernable traits, then the following bit from Scientific American will come as a surprise. I've added bold to make a point:

Swiss adults unfamiliar with French politics were shown 57 pairs of photos of opponents from an old French parliamentary election and asked to pick which ones looked most competent. In a separate experiment, Swiss kids ages 5 to 13 played a computer game that enacted Odysseus' trip from Troy to Ithaca. Then, using the same pairs of photos, researchers asked the kids which candidate they'd choose to captain their ship. In both experiments, the adults and children tended to pick the winners of the election.

"Adults and children infer competence in precisely the same way, whether that [person] is six or seven — or 67. That is the shocking finding here," study co-author John Antonakis, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of Lausanne, tells ScientificAmerican.com. "This stereotype is already formed in young childhood, which leads us to suggest this mechanism is innate or develops very, very rapidly at a young age."

For those of you who actually have competed for a place in the hierarchy, this result is no surprise. You will already know that the "beautiful people" get a pass in life, that taller people get selected to lead, that males with that extra bit of testosterone confirming their alpha male status are secure and can easily intimidate lesser males. But apparantly the authors of this study have come from another planet and didn't know this.

My only quibble is the term "competence". It is misleading. These "leaders" are not more skillful or knowledgeable. They are simply set up by their genes/experience (nature/nurture feedback loop) to be on top and this is what is being recognized. I've worked for too many incompetent bosses to be confused about "competence". I'm clear on whose in charge and I'm pretty clear about competence, and the two are generally statistically unrelated.