Abstract
Height has been closely studied as a factor that influences myriad measures of leadership; however, the potential influence of weight on socially beneficial traits has been neglected. Using the anthropological concept of “big men” who relied on influence to lead their communities, we examine the role of weight upon persuasiveness. We present the results of six studies that suggest a tendency for raters to expect larger body mass to correspond with more persuasiveness among men. In the sixth, pre-registered study, we find evidence that fits the hypothesis that weight among men is positively associated with perceived persuasiveness. While the “big man” leadership concept is based on studies of pre-industrial societies where weight embodied status, our findings suggest an evolved bias to favor moderately big men–with respect to perceived persuasiveness–even in environments where there is no reason to interpret over-consumption of food and conservation of energy as a signal of wealth. Our studies contribute novel perspectives on the relevance of weight as an understudied dimension of “big” and offer an important qualification informed by evolutionary perspectives for the stigmatizing effects of relatively large body mass.
Highlights
Anthropologists studying small-scale pre-industrial societies commonly and traditionally described community leaders–who needed to rely on persuasiveness rather than institutional power or force–as “big men” [1]
While the regression results suggest that height underlies the correlation between weight and persuasiveness, researchers who focus on obesity are clear to note that the relationship between weight and height is complex and imperfectly understood [62]
The stimulus-set that we used in Studies 4–6 does follow the conventional depictions of under, normal, and over-weight developed by Singh [73,74] and clearly controls for height; it is plausible that more varied stimuli could generate different patterns of ratings. This is sensible in light of the fact that there remain substantial gaps in how the relationships between height and weight are understood [62] along with our own expectation that the positive relationship that we find in Studies 4–6 between height and perceived persuasiveness must eventually have an upper limit after which the relationship would be curvilinear
Summary
Anthropologists studying small-scale pre-industrial societies commonly and traditionally described community leaders–who needed to rely on persuasiveness rather than institutional power or force–as “big men” [1]. While it is plausible that the heaviest and biggest boxers might tend to be the best, the great majority of people have occupations and lives that do not include boxing; the degree to which attraction to “big” tends to cut across activity domains is an important question to examine since being big would seem to be irrelevant to most contemporary jobs It is consistent with the findings of our pilot study that a recent article by evolutionary psychologists [55] found that people tend to be perceive that “bigger is better” with respect to an athlete’s overall size (i.e., inclusive but not limited to considerations of weight). Subsequent to their completion of the LBDQ, participants reported their weight and height
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