Professional appearance judgments can disadvantage Black women with natural hairstyles.

Gray hair affects perceived age but not necessarily trust or status judgments.

People with shaved heads are perceived as stronger and more dominant.

You see a man with a shaved head. A woman with gray hair. A Black woman wearing her hair naturally. Someone with long blond hair.

Before any of them speaks, you may already have formed an impression.

Hair is one of the most visible parts of a person’s appearance. We may use it to make inferences that extend far beyond hairstyle. Research suggests that hair can influence our judgments about age and attractiveness, but also dominance, competence, professionalism, health, and personality.

A particularly revealing study published this year visually separated hair from the face to see how much each contributed to first impressions. Swanson and colleagues (2026) showed participants photographs of 40 people in three different forms: the whole person’s head, the face with the hair hidden, or the hair with the face hidden. Participants were asked to make judgments on either how powerful or warm the person seemed.

Hair turned out to matter quite a lot for judgments of power. Ratings based on the hair alone strongly predicted how powerful the whole person appeared, even after researchers accounted for judgments based on the face. Hair contributed much less to impressions of warmth, such as whether someone seemed kind or cooperative. This research did not attempt to identify which hairstyles made people seem more powerful, however.

But earlier research found a similar effect with shaved heads. Mannes (2013) showed that men with shaved heads were perceived as more dominant than men with full heads of hair. In one experiment, researchers digitally removed the hair from photographs of the same men. The shaved versions were judged as more dominant, taller, and stronger.

So it seems that hair can clearly contribute to impressions of........

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