Imagine if, in addition to debates and canvassing, political candidates had to compete in a swimsuit walk and a fashion show.
While it may seem far-fetched, one new study found that national politics aren't so different from a beauty pageant after all: the physical features of political candidates have a significant impact on voters' choices.
The study, published by a Princeton professor in the Oct. 23 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that a quick look at a candidate's face can have a powerful effect on voters. The study included three experiments in which participants were shown pairs of pictures from actual, ongoing senatorial and gubernatorial elections in the United States.
When asked to choose the more competent face - the better candidate - after a tenth of a second glance, the participants predicted the winner of the election at a rate of about 70 percent. When the participants were given time to deliberate, the accuracy decreased.
According to the study, "the findings suggest that rapid, unreflective judgments of competence from faces can affect voting decisions."
Tufts Professor of Psychology Nalini Ambady said this was not surprising.
"This is not a novel finding ... it reinforces a lot of findings in previous literature," she said, explaining that the study simply applied previous findings to the realm of politics. Ambady said that previous studies have found that people can also judge dominance and moods from brief glances at a series of faces.
Ambady also said that people have a "positive bias towards familiarity," and that there is a bias against the elderly when people make judgments based on quick glances at faces. She added that candidates' ethnicity would likely affect participants' responses.
Drew Westen, professor of psychology at Emory University, published a book this year titled "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation" in which he argues that emotion influences a voter's choices more than rationality. In a New York Times article about the book, Westen said that "humans innately dislike facial asymmetries" and that humans are positively influenced by smiling candidates.
Jon Krosnick, professor at Stanford University, has published research suggesting that the order of names on ballots also affects voting. In an op-ed article for the New York Times in November 2006, Krosnick wrote that "candidates listed first on the ballot get about two percentage points more votes on average than they would have if they had been listed later."
On the Hill, some students were not surprised by the results. Junior Alex Brindle said he thinks many voters are much more superficial in making their choices than they might let on.
"I feel like people are pretty fickle," he said. "[A candidate's face] shouldn't [affect a voter's decision], but it's not possible for it not to."
Freshman Haroon Qasim disagreed.
"[The study] surprises me," he said. "[Successful candidates] have to be competent - you can't decide just on looks."
Qasim said he would be more likely to vote for a candidate he was familiar with, especially if he knew the candidate was capable.
Junior Olivia Kim was not surprised by the results either.
"Appearance does count a lot," Kim said. "I guess it's a bad thing because people have preferences on what they think is attractive or not."
Kim referenced the first televised presidential debate held between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960, which was famous for the research that discovered how much voters read into the appearance of each candidate.
Those who watched the 1960 debate on television said that Kennedy, who had worn stage makeup, had won easily over Nixon, who refused makeup and sweated profusely under the lights on the stage.
According to a retrospective feature about the debate on the BBC Web site, "Although viewers on television felt Mr. Kennedy had won the first debate outright, people who listened on the radio felt it had been a very close contest."
The feature includes a description from a BBC article published the day after the debate: "[Kennedy] appeared tanned, confident and well-rested after campaigning in California," it says. "By contrast, his opponent had recently spent two weeks in hospital for a serious knee operation and still looked underweight with a pallid complexion. He refused any make-up to improve his colour."
In the end, Kennedy won the 1960 election.
