Facial appearance affects voting decisions.

By Anthony C. Little, R. Burriss, B. Jones, Susan C. Roberts. 2007

415 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Human groups are unusual among primates in that our leaders are often democratically selected. Faces affect hiring decisions and could influence voting behavior. Here, we show that facial appearance has important effects on choice of leader. We show that differences in facial shape alone between candidates can predict who wins or loses in an election (Study 1) and that changing context from war time to peace time can affect which face receives the most votes (Study 2). Our studies highlight the role of face shape in voting behavior and the role of personal attributions in face perception. We also show that there may be no general characteristics of faces that can win votes, demonstrating that face traits and information about the environment interact in choice of leader.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/95d7a583c5a3e747e520c4cafefa55857fa2b2b8

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Not so Fast. On Some Bold Neuroscientific Claims Concerning Human Agency (2010, background): “In a “time of war” context, the subjects tended to prefer the former (who was perceived as more masculine), while in a “time of peace” context, they tended to prefer the latter (who was perceived as more intelligent and forgiving) [39].”
Does a competent leader make a good friend? Conflict, ideology and the psychologies of friendship and followership (2015, background): “Consistent with the existence of this trade-off, a range of studies have all found an enhanced preference for masculine and dominantlooking leaders and political candidates in times of threat from outgroups or war (Hall et al., 2009; Little, Roberts, Jones, & DeBruine, 2012; Little et al., 2007; Spi”
Biology and Management: A Review, Critique, and Research Agenda (2018, background): “Facial cues and attractiveness were frequently related to leadership (Alrajih & Ward, 2014; Little, 2014; Little et al., 2007; Olivola, Eubanks, & Lovelace, 2014), while body weight was related to hiring, earnings, and leadership.”
Elected in 100 milliseconds: Appearance-Based Trait Inferences and Voting (2010, methodology): “Little et al. created novel pairs of faces from the faces of the candidates for the highest political posts in the US, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, using shape differences between the faces relative to an average male face.”
The Many Faces of Leadership (2015, background): “Facial femininity—characterized by features such as a round face, big eyes, small eyebrows, and full lips— is a cue to trustworthiness, and various studies have shown that people vote for more feminine-looking leaders when seeking to maintain peace (Little et al., 2007).”
Voice pitch influences voting behavior (2012, background): “While facial appearance alters voting behavior (Little et al., 2007; Todorov et al., 2005) and voice qualities are related to election outcomes and voting behavior (Gregory & Gallagher, 2002; Surawski & Ossoff, 2006), no study has investigated the role of voice pitch in voting-related perceptions.”
Perceived Conflict and Leader Dominance: Individual and Contextual Factors Behind Preferences for Dominant Leaders (2017, background): “Importantly, in contrast to theoretical speculations in existing work (e.g., Little et al., 2007; Spisak et al., 2012b; Van Vugt & Grabo, 2015), subjects assigned to the cooperatively oriented No-Conflict condition were no more likely to choose the non-dominant leader face than subjects assigned to…”
Social attributions from faces: determinants, consequences, accuracy, and functional significance. (2015, background): “Other studies have similarly shown that electoral outcomes are predicted by how dominant (Chen et al. 2014, Chiao et al. 2008, Little et al. 2007), sociable (Castelli et al. 2009), threatening (Mattes et al. 2010, Spezio et al. 2008), stereotypically Republican (Olivola et al. 2012), and even…”
Faces of politicians: Babyfacedness predicts inferred competence but not electoral success (2009, neutral): “gubernatorial elections. Little et al. (2007) examine”