Exploring the Association between Israeli Legislators’ Physical Attractiveness and Their Television News Coverage

Tsfati, Yariv; Markowitz-Elfassi, Dana; Waismel-Manor, Israel

doi:10.1177/1940161209361212

Cited by 40 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…However, actual empirical work directly investigating the purely informational subfunction of the media for politicians is as good as entirely missing. Although studies have shown that most politicians are news junkies (e.g., Davis, 2007;Van Aelst et al, 2008a), we know little about what they learn from it. There are hardly studies on the "media dependency" of political actors.…”

Section: The Information Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Also for common politicians, for whom access may even be more crucial, relatively small status differences-for example, for a parliamentarian: being a committee chair or not-are strong predictors of media exposure (Cook, 1986;Sellers & Schaffner, 2007;Tresch, 2009). Some studies suggest that working hard in parliament leads to more coverage (Bowler, 2010;Midtbø, 2011), while others found no such diligence effect (Fogarty, 2008;Tsfati, Markowitz Elfassi & Waismel-Manor, 2010). Scholars have also looked at noninstitutional aspects to explain the media attention politicians get such as their communication skills (Sheafer, 2001) or physical attractiveness (Waismel-Manor & Tsfati, 2011).…”

Section: The Arena Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Information and Arena: The Dual Function of the News Media for Political Elites

Aelst

Walgrave

2016

J Commun

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How do individual politicians use the news media to reach their political goals? This study addresses the question by proposing an actor-centered, functional approach. We distinguish two essential functions (and sub-functions) the mass media have for political elites. The media are a source of information; politicians depend on it for pure information and they can profit from the momentum generated by media information. The media also are an arena elites need access to in order to promote themselves and their issues. These two functions offer certain politicians a structural advantage over others and, hence, are relevant for the power struggle among political elites. A systematic functional account allows to compare the role of the media across politicians and political systems.

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Section: The Information Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Arena Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information and Arena: The Dual Function of the News Media for Political Elites

Aelst

Walgrave

2016

J Commun

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“…In politics, good‐looking politicians are more likely to be nominated to executive positions at all levels in comparison to politicians who are perceived as less attractive (Ibrocheva, ). In elections, attractive candidates frequently get a vote premium of several percentage points solely based on their looks (Tsafati, Elfassi, and Weismiel‐Manor, ; Hoegg and Lewis, ). But who are the voters for whom the physical appearance of candidates is a primary criterion in their votechoice?…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Blinded by Beauty? Physical Attractiveness and Candidate Selection in the U.S. House of Representatives

Stockemer¹,

Praino²

2015

Social Science Quarterly

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Objective. In this article we show that physical attractiveness matters as a heuristic device for uninformed voters but not for politically savvy voters. Methods. Drawing on a two-step experiment, we first ask over 100 students to rank the physical attractiveness of candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives. Second, we create a treatment and a control group comprising each of 1,200 research different subjects. We ask the first group to indicate their vote choice by merely looking at the picture of candidates for the 2008 U.S. House of Representatives elections, while the second group has a picture and a detailed description of the political/professional competence of the contenders at their disposal. Results. We find that our first group of study subjects representing all those voters who are politically uninformed tend to cast their ballot for the better-looking candidate, whereas the second group, representing politically knowledgeable individuals, choose the more competent candidate. Conclusion. Our experimental study provides evidence that uninformed or politically unknowledgeable voters use political appearance as a heuristic device in casing their ballot at elections.The axiom "what is beautiful is good" applies to many social settings (Dion, Berscheid, and Walster, 1972:285). In human interactions, attractive individuals are immediately perceived as being more likeable and friendly (cf. Brewer and Archer, 2007). At the workplace, more attractive individuals gain a pay premium of up to 10 percent and are prone to advance their careers faster than less attractive employees (Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994). In politics, good-looking politicians are more likely to be nominated to executive positions at all levels in comparison to politicians who are perceived as less attractive (Ibrocheva, 2009). In elections, attractive candidates frequently get a vote premium of several percentage points solely based on their looks (Tsafati, Elfassi, and Weismiel-Manor, 2010;Hoegg and Lewis, 2011). But who are the voters for whom the physical appearance of candidates is a primary criterion in their votechoice? While some studies (e.g., Lenz and Lawson, 2011) entertain the possibility that uninformed voters use physical appearance as a heuristic device to make their vote choices, there is still some need for a study that empirically tests the relationship between physical attractiveness and vote choice in the presence of voters with low and high levels of information.To investigate whether uninformed individuals use physical attractiveness as an information shortcut more so than informed voters, we perform a two-step experiment. We first ask approximately 100 Canadian coders to rate the physical attractiveness of all contenders in more than 320 electoral contests for the 2008 congressional elections to the * Direct correspondence to Daniel Stockemer, School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, 120 University (7076), Ottawa, K1N 6N5 daniel.stockemer@uottawa.ca . Data and coding information are available on request f...

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“…A recent example found low cognitive capacity or distracted voters evaluated attractive political candidates more favorably than unattractive candidates (Hart, Ottati, & Krumdick, 2011). Controlling for other factors, physically attractive politicians in Israel also tended to attract more TV news coverage than their unattractive counterparts (Tsfati, Elfassi, & Waismel-Manor, 2010). Physical attractiveness also affects simple judgments (e.g.…”

Section: Covariates Athlete Attractivenessmentioning

confidence: 98%