Physical attractiveness, voter heuristics and electoral systems: The role of candidate attractiveness under different institutional designs

Stockemer, Daniel; Praino, Rodrigo

doi:10.1177/1369148116687533

Cited by 24 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…16,17 These effects hold outside of the lab, with more attractive candidates demonstrating significantly greater electoral success, even controlling for traditional explanations of campaign outcomes. 13,18,19,20 The ''attractiveness premium'' is particularly prominent in lowinformation elections 21 and for uninformed voters. 22 Dumitrescu notes that in addition to aspects such as gender, skin tone, and body language, attractiveness is one of a number of important nonverbal cues to which voters react during campaigns.…”

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confidence: 99%

Effects of physical attractiveness on political beliefs

Peterson

Palmer

2017

Polit. life sci.

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Physical attractiveness is an important social factor in our daily interactions. Scholars in social psychology provide evidence that attractiveness stereotypes and the "halo effect" are prominent in affecting the traits we attribute to others. However, the interest in attractiveness has not directly filtered down to questions of political behavior beyond candidates and elites. Utilizing measures of attractiveness across multiple surveys, we examine the relationship between attractiveness and political beliefs. Controlling for socioeconomic status, we find that more attractive individuals are more likely to report higher levels of political efficacy, identify as conservative, and identify as Republican. These findings suggest an additional mechanism for political socialization that has further implications for understanding how the body intertwines with the social nature of politics.

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confidence: 99%

Effects of physical attractiveness on political beliefs

Peterson

Palmer

2017

Polit. life sci.

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“…We follow earlier work in having photographs judged by raters from another country (Antonakis and Dalgas 2009;Berggren et al 2010;King and Leigh 2009;Lawson et al 2010;Praino and Stockemer 2019;Praino et al 2014;Rule et al 2010;Stockemer and Praino 2017). Specifically, ratings were provided by Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers from the U.S. Ratings by outsiders make for a cleaner and unbiased measurement of the desired traits (see Lawson et al 2010 for a discussion).…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do campaign posters trigger voting based on looks? Probing an explanation for why good-looking candidates win more votes

Herrmann

Shikano

2020

Acta Polit

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Numerous studies document that better-looking candidates win more votes. Yet the causal mechanisms leading to this advantage remain unexplored. We consider for the first time a potential trigger of the looks-vote association that has previously been suggested but not tested in the literature: exposure to campaign posters of the candidates. We test this explanation with German election survey data, which we augment with ratings-provided by MTurk workers from the U.S.-of the attractiveness and facial competence of about 1,000 district candidates. Confirming previous studies on Germany, we find that attractiveness is positively associated with candidate vote share (1.2 ppts. min-max). At the voter level, we find tentative evidence for the idea that the association is moderated by exposure to campaign posters: effects are in the expected directions and their sizes consistent with what we observe at the candidate level, but we cannot always reject the null hypothesis of no effect. In contrast to attractiveness, we do not find conclusive evidence for an effect of facial competence in the election considered. These preliminary results suggest that inundating voters with candidate posters, as in elections in Germany and many other places, might be a reason for voting based on looks.

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“…When it comes to candidate attractiveness, the more attractive a candidate is, the more votes he or she tends to receive. Scholars have been able to empirically show that the relationship between physical attractiveness and electoral success exists in a large number of countries, including the United Kingdom (Milazzo and Mattes, ), the United States (Praino, Stockemer, and Ratis, ), France (Antonakis and Dalgas, ), Finland (Berggren, Jordahl, and Poutvaara, ), and Germany (Stockemer and Praino, ). In addition, this relationship also holds across local, state, national, and federal elections (cf.…”

Section: Physical Attractiveness Voter Heuristics and Electoral Outmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While for space reasons we briefly review here only the general findings of the relevant literature, existing works have presented additional interesting findings. For instance, voters in winner‐take‐all plurality electoral systems are more prone to use candidate appearance as a heuristic device than voters in proportional systems (Stockemer and Praino, ); conservative candidates benefit more from their physical appearance than others (Berggren, Jordahl, and Poutvaara, ); attractive individuals are considered more knowledgeable and more persuasive (Palmer and Peterson, ); and good‐looking candidates benefit disproportionately from media exposure (Lenz and Lawson, ) and get a “break” when involved in scandals (Stockemer and Praino, ). A lot of work has also been done on understanding the underlying mechanism applied by voters (Hart, Ottati, and Krumdick, ; Stockemer and Praino, ).…”

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What Are Good‐Looking Candidates, and Can They Sway Election Results?*

Praino

Stockemer

2018

Social Science Quarterly

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Objective In this article, we address two major gaps in the understanding of the relationship between candidate attractiveness and electoral success. With the assistance of the Victoria Police Criminal Identification Unit in Melbourne, Australia, we show how good‐looking candidates look like by building the faces of six “ideal candidates” in terms of physical attractiveness. Utilizing our “ideal candidates,” we then investigate whether candidate attractiveness can actually sway electoral results. Methods We proceed in four distinct steps, using data from the 2008 U.S. House of Representatives elections. First, we collect data on candidate attractiveness. Second, we build our “ideal candidates” and obtain their attractiveness ranking. Third, we model the effect of candidate attractiveness on candidate vote margins. Fourth, we run four hypothetical scenarios that assess whether candidate attractiveness can sway the electoral results in marginal seats. Results About two‐thirds of marginal races would trigger a different winner if the actual loser looked like our ideal candidates. In addition, virtually every single marginal race would have had a different outcome if the unsuccessful candidate looked like our “ideal candidate” and the successful candidate was very unattractive. Conclusion Candidate attractiveness can sway electoral results, provided that elections are competitive.

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Physical attractiveness, voter heuristics and electoral systems: The role of candidate attractiveness under different institutional designs

Cited by 24 publications

References 73 publications

Effects of physical attractiveness on political beliefs

Effects of physical attractiveness on political beliefs

Do campaign posters trigger voting based on looks? Probing an explanation for why good-looking candidates win more votes

What Are Good‐Looking Candidates, and Can They Sway Election Results?*

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