Chief executive officers who appear competent, who look the part, earn more money than less competent-looking CEOs, U. S. researchers have found.

It was further reported that professors John Graham, Campbell Harvey and Manju Puri of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business paired photos of the chief executive officers of large and small companies with photos of non-executives with similar facial features, hairstyles and clothing. They asked 2,000 participants to assess photos of the same 100 CEOs and non-executives based on attractiveness, competence, trustworthiness and likeability.

Graham said in a statement, "Other researchers have found links between beauty and workers' pay, and demonstrated that politicians benefit from good looks at election time. We wanted to see whether appearance also plays a role at the corporate executive level."

Published as National Bureau of Economic Research working paper number 1590, the study found the CEOs rated competent just by their appearance tended to have higher income of 7.5 percent.

Harvey said, "We are told that CEOs are very carefully vetted by boards of directors and professional consultants, as they should be for their multimillion-dollar jobs. The fact that our research shows that appearance is unquestionably significant turns my stomach." (With Inputs from Agencies)