Having the right face can fool investors, even if you’re a bully. That’s the conclusion of a new study by French researchers, which found that dictators perceived as competent tend to attract higher levels of foreign investment. Additionally, the team also found that these first impressions of competence linger and can survive later revelations of poor performance.

The survey was conducted by political scientist Dr Sophie Panel from Sciences Po Grenoble and her colleagues.

Dr Panel said: “Established research has shown that first impressions of faces are mostly wrong – but have consequences for a wide range of outcomes such as voting choices or sentencing decisions.

“Our results suggest that these impressions may be powerful enough to influence people’s willingness to invest large sums.”

This, she added, can happen “even in the face of evidence that may demonstrate a lack of jurisdiction”.

In their study, the researchers gathered photographs of 276 dictators, taken between the years 1975 and 2010, cropped down to the faces and made them monochrome.

An example of a dictator included in the image set is Leopoldo Galtieri, the military dictator who served as President of Argentina from December 22, 1981 to June 18, 1982.

The researchers recruited people online and had them complete a survey in which they were asked to rate the perceived competence and trustworthiness of each edited dictator’s face.

The team said they received an average of around 50 ratings for each image.

READ MORE: ‘No sign’ Putin will use nukes against Ukraine, says UK spy chief

In the second part of the study, Dr. Panel then compared the recorded skill and reliability ratings with the actual inflows of foreign investment into the countries ruled by each of the dictators during their time in power.

The team said, “We find that seemingly competent leaders attract more foreign direct investment.”

However, they added, there is “no evidence” of the same effect among dictators who have been ranked as more trustworthy.

The researchers continued, “Our results also show that the strength of the association between perceived competence and foreign direct investment does not diminish throughout the leader’s tenure.

“[This] suggests that first impressions of competence are not easily replaced by factual information about the leader’s actual skills and performance.

The full results of the study have been published in The Leadership Quarterly.