Facial Dominance of West Point Cadets as a Predictor of Later Military Rank

Facial dominance of West Point cadets, measured from their graduation portraits, is known to be related to cadets' ranks at the military academy, but it has been reported to be unrelated to their ranks in later career (Mazur, Mazur & Keating 1984). With improved methods of data collection and analysis, we show that cadets' facial dominance, while still unrelated to their ranks at midcareer, is related to promotions in late career, 20 or more years after the portraits were taken. These results suggest that the absence of physical features from current models of status attainment is a serious omission.