Face more important that policy in politics

As election fever fades in the US, researchers at Northwestern University, Illinois suggest that voters are more likely to be influenced by the facial impressions of a political candidate than by their policies.

Joan Chiao and her colleagues asked male and female voters to judge a series of male and female political candidates on how competent, dominant, attractive and approachable they seemed, based on facial appearance alone. Any high profile candidate likely to be already familiar to the voter was excluded in an attempt to eliminate bias. Interestingly, the gender of the voter had significant influence on the perception of the candidate they would be most likely to vote for, and the gender of the candidate had significant influence on the perception of the voter to assess their political suitability.

Male politicians were considered more competent than female politicians by all voters, regardless of their own gender. Female voters saw male candidates as more dominant, whereas male voters saw no difference in dominance between the genders. Female candidates were seen as both more attractive and more approachable than their male counterparts. However, across all voters and all candidates, perceived competence and dominance were significant predictors of actual election outcomes.

Joan and her colleagues from the Department of Psychology suggest reasons why this may be. “Gender stereotypes may bias voters to value male politicians over female politicians simply because they possess facial features that signal qualities associated with effective leaders, and secondly, endowed with intuitive heuristics for selecting optimal mates, voters may unconsciously apply these when making other social decisions, such as deciding whom to vote for”.
The team published evidence in the Public Library of Science