Environmental characteristics can influence aging. Democracy results in higher life expectancy for its members. However, there is a lack of research that indicates the influence of democracy on its leaders. Specifically, we examine how the nature of democracy affects the perceived aging of its leaders. In this paper, we capture perceived aging via face perception. We suggest that leaders in a democracy are perceived to age more compared to those in an autocracy. Counter to the common belief that democracies are less stressful, we find that the stress of being a leader in a democracy can have adverse effects. Study 1 uses picture pairs of 268 leaders from across the world, and participants judge age difference in years between the pictures. Study 2, a controlled study, examines downstream influences on the leader's specific attributes. Results indicate that leaders appearing to age more are more likely to avoid complex decisions, to be less charismatic, and to be less inspiring.

中文翻译：

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领导民主的危险。

环境特征会影响老化。民主导致其成员的预期寿命更长。然而，缺乏研究表明民主对其领导人的影响。具体而言，我们研究了民主的性质如何影响其领导人的感知老龄化。在本文中，我们通过面部感知来捕捉感知到的老化。我们认为，与专制政体中的领导人相比，民主政体中的领导人被认为年龄更大。与民主国家压力较小的普遍看法相反，我们发现作为民主国家领导人的压力会产生不利影响。研究 1 使用了来自世界各地的 268 位领导人的图片对，参与者判断图片之间的年龄差异。研究 2 是一项对照研究，检查下游对领导者特定属性的影响。