The ABA Journal today blogged about a recently published social psychology experiment that found the apparent dominance / maturity of law firms' managing partners' faces (as rated by college students, the usual social science lab rats) correlated slightly (14%) with the managing partners' respective firms' profitability levels.
For a limited time you can download the study report here.
Even though I am a social scientist myself, I have a hard time interpreting this not-yet-replicated study as anything other than entertaining silliness. However, given that neither lawyers nor marketers are renowned for their statistical savvy (otherwise, they'd have become accountants and physicists), I'm a little worried about what some might do with this new-found information.
Below is an animated movie (created with my new favorite online toy, xtranormal) to illustrate the dangers of leaping into action after reading a headline that says, "Recent research finds that ...."