You look like a political winner

by David Safier

Here's a strange and troubling couple of articles in Scientific American, saying both adults and children can choose who is going to win a political race by looking at pictures of their faces. Obviously, it's not 100% accurate, but that this would be a statistically significant finding says something about the nature of electoral politics.

A recent study indicated that people can guess who are Democrats and Republicans by black and white photos. That's easier to understand, since people's hair styles and expressions probably reflect their political leanings. When people rated the faces based on personality types:

 Subjects consistently associated Democrats with warmth (likeable and trustworthy) and Republicans with power (dominant and mature). These findings were independent of the gender of the person in the photo.

The earlier study showed adults could pick political winners and losers based on head shots. Even children aged 5-13 could do it, if you got them to play a game and asked them which of the two people would make better ship captains.

Here's the kicker for me. Some people are more swayed by candidate appearance than others.

Research by Gabriel Lenz and Chappell Lawson at MIT shows that candidate appearances have the strongest impact on voters who possess little political knowledge and spend a lot of time in front of their television screens.

Not much of a surprise there.