Political Ideology at Face Value

Abstract

Four studies demonstrated that perceivers were able to identify the political attitudes of unknown politicians on a left-right dimension when the targets were merely shown in photographs. In Study 1, party membership provided an objective criterion for political attitudes, whereas actual voting behavior served as a validity criterion in Studies 2, 3a, and 3b. All studies yielded ratings highly chance accuracy. Additional ratings suggest that perceived dominance may partly account for the effect. Moreover, perceivers were more accurate when they rated politicians whose attitudes were opposite to their own position, reflecting a more liberal criterion for out-group than for in-group members. Finally, politicians who were rated accurately had higher chances of being reelected to the following parliamentary session.

I like who you like, but only if I like you: Female character affects mate-choice copying

“…Several other studies have recently presented evidence in support of a relationship between character and facial appearance in humans (e.g. Kramer, King, & Ward, 2011;Samochowiec, Wänke, & Fiedler, 2010;Stirrat & Perrett, 2010) and it is therefore possible that character-driven mate-choice copying can take place even when the character of the model is not explicitly known.…”

Winning Faces Vary by Ideology: How Nonverbal Source Cues Influence Election and Communication Success in Politics

“…As argued in a number of these studies, this suggests that voters hold (partly correct) stereotypic associations between the ideology of politicians and their facial metrics and gestures (Carpinella & Johnson, 2013;Samochowiec et al, 2010). Detailed investigations of the content of these stereotypes have shown that a "dominant" look is associated with a right-wing rather than left-wing ideology (Samochowiec et al, 2010) and a "powerful" Downloaded by [Florida Atlantic University] at 23:49 10 August 2015 look is associated with being Republican and a "warm" and non-dominant look with being Democrat . 4 On this basis, we predict-in parallel to studies of explicit cues of ideology-that liberal audiences are more willing to follow non-dominant-looking sources and conservative audiences are more likely to follow dominant-looking sources.…”

“…Specifically, several studies have shown that naive subjects can predict the party affiliation and ideological leanings of U.S., British, German, and Swiss politicians by merely looking at photos of the politicians' faces (Bull & Hawkes, 1982;Jahoda, 1954;Samochowiec et al, 2010; however see also Olivola & Todorov, 2010b). As argued in a number of these studies, this suggests that voters hold (partly correct) stereotypic associations between the ideology of politicians and their facial metrics and gestures (Carpinella & Johnson, 2013;Samochowiec et al, 2010). Detailed investigations of the content of these stereotypes have shown that a "dominant" look is associated with a right-wing rather than left-wing ideology (Samochowiec et al, 2010) and a "powerful" Downloaded by [Florida Atlantic University] at 23:49 10 August 2015 look is associated with being Republican and a "warm" and non-dominant look with being Democrat .…”

Social Attributions from Faces: Determinants, Consequences, Accuracy, and Functional Significance

“…As Hull (1928) put it, "The results as a whole certainly look very bad for the judgment of character on the basis of photographs" (p. 119). Yet, there has been a flurry of recent research claiming to demonstrate that people can accurately guess a variety of internal traits and behavioral tendencies from facial photographs, such as political orientation (Rule & Ambady 2010, Samochowiec et al 2010, but see Olivola & Todorov 2010b), sexual orientation (Rule & Ambady 2008b, Rule et al 2009b; but see Olivola & Todorov 2010b), and even criminal behavior , Valla et al 2011; but see Olivola & Todorov 2010b. However, the conclusion that a person's facial appearance is a valid indicator of his/her underlying characteristics suffers from numerous shortcomings that have not been properly addressed in many of these studies.…”