Political Affiliation Can Be Differentiated By Appearance 262
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samzenpus
from the if-it-looks-like-a-liberal-and-quacks-like-a-liberal dept.
from the if-it-looks-like-a-liberal-and-quacks-like-a-liberal dept.
quaith writes "It's not the way they dress, but the appearance of their face. A study published in PLoS One by Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University used closely cropped greyscale photos of people's faces, standardized for size. Undergrads were asked to categorize each person as either a Democrat or Republican. In the first study, students were able to differentiate Republican from Democrat senate candidates. In the second, students were able to differentiate the political affiliation of other college students. Accuracy in both studies was about 60% — not perfect, but way better than chance."
Factors Are Likeability, Trustworthiness and Age (Score:3, Interesting)
Factor 1 (46% of variance explained) consisted of high loadings on likeability (.94) and trustworthiness (.97) and low loadings on dominance (.11) and facial maturity (.14). Factor 2 (42% of variance explained) consisted of high loadings on dominance (.92) and facial maturity
My grandmother used to tell me something along the lines of what is often misattributed to Churchill [wikiquote.org]:
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
And I would also like to point out for the college students that society (especially high school) often pigeonholes people and defines who they are on how they look. The individual sometimes has no choice and sometimes just accepts it and goes with it in order to belong. If you look older when you're young and people might instinctively treat you like a cold Republican. Always looked young and innocent? Then a warm Democrat.
Would be an explanation that agrees with the correlation the research drew to define the deviation from random guessing but nothing conclusive.
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
The old saw: "If you're not a liberal when you're young, you have no heart; if you're not a conservative when you're older, you have no brain." (Variants have been attributed to Winston Churchill, though there is no indication that he ever said this)
Age may not be such a bad indicator after all.
Re:Geez, pick the black guy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently it's this: people with more powerful looking faces are more likely to be Republican (and are more likely to be chosen as Republican, regardless of their true affiliation), and people with warmer more friendly faces are picked to be Democratic
You should read the paper. They actually linked to the full study this time, so it's a worthy read; if you've never actually read a scientific study before, you'll realize how different real science is compared to how the press is when it reports on science.
Disappointing... (Score:1, Interesting)
Admittedly, i've only been browsing through the text and images, but i haven't seen anything to warrant a statement like the following:
In sum, the finding that political affiliation can be accurately judged from targets' faces extends our knowledge of the power of facial cues in forming accurate impressions of others.
And looking at the results of study 3: Standard deviations that are consistently about twice the size of the difference of means are telling me only one thing: don't bother.
Re:Obvious (Score:2, Interesting)
Nobody voted for McCain. They voted for Palin. And yes, they were urbanally challenged.
Re:FACES OF YOUR CANDIDATES (Score:2, Interesting)
They used Temple records to find the Jews, and names, the stereotyping by feature was just something to stir up the Volk.
Re:Mental Pictures Of Libertarians (Score:3, Interesting)
I think they are. I'm more than willing to make them at the expense of my own people. Heaven knows that most of us WASPs only got through college and landed good jobs because of Dad's golf buddies ;) Heck, some of the best stereotypes are the white trash ones.....
I honestly don't think repeating a few off color jokes and/or stereotypes make one into a racist. But then I never was a big fan of political correctness.
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
Fun with stereotypes (Score:5, Interesting)
My Dad is a classic big city East Coast liberal. In the 1960's he participated in civil rights marches, and in the 1980's I heard him constantly bitching about Reagan's economic policies. For the last forty years, he has given tons to homeless people on the street, with one caveat. Instead of throwing them a buck or two, he offers to buy them whatever they want at a nearby fast food joint. Many don't accept (for obvious reasons), but they do, he goes in with them, buys them whatever they want and eats with them.
He's also been self-employed for his entire life.
Two types of conservative (Score:4, Interesting)
Fiscal liberals say things like "deficits don't matter" (Rummy), social liberals say things like "I have a dream".
Out of the possible combinations my personal preference is fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Yeah, that usually means more taxes but nobody ever claimed civilization was cheap.
Interesting... (Score:4, Interesting)
And then it dawned on me. If there is a correlation between appearance and political leanings, how would any causal relationship work? I think the causation of politics determining appearance is the easier one to spot. Most conservatives I know seem to place more of an emphasis on appearance, while the liberals I know place more of an emphasis on ideas; feeling that ideas will stand or fall on their own merit, regardless of the appearance of the messenger. So, liberals don't see as much need for dressing up before trying to pitch their ideas.
Now, the causation from appearance to politics is a little more subtle. My suspicion is that the people who are "less beautiful" are the ones who spend more of their time on the outside of popularity. They're they people who never made the ballot for prom queen, didn't get asked to the school dance, didn't have as many romantic opportunities. They got more of a taste of what it's like to be a "have not" or to be outside of the majority. This experience, I believe, can cause them to have the increased empathy and tendency to "look out for others" that seems to characterize liberal thought.
On the other hand, the people are very attractive or physically gifted had an easier time of things. Athletic success came easier to the "natural born athletes", and the pretty or charismatic people had an easier time getting others to back their ideas or plans. Things just went a little easier for them. Because we can only experience the world through our own eyes, I can see how the "beautiful people" could believe that (as it was for them) one only needs to apply themselves to a goal and it'll work out. This could give rise to the "anybody willing to work hard will find success" mindset that we tend to see in conservatives.
Re:Obvious (Score:2, Interesting)
For a start, your money does not exist, it is a function of society, of government, all the money like all the assets in a society are owned by that society and it is based upon that society/government, how control over those assets is distributed and defined. You own nothing (except that bag of mostly water) and your are nothing but a cranky short haired rock throwing monkey on your own. It is only by being part of a society, being a part of government (voting and sharing you opinion counts just as much as standing for election as a representative of the rest of society). It is time get over the really rather juvenile fantasy of 'mine, mine, mine' and wake up to the mature reality of 'ours'.
As to being able to guess a person political standing by their appearance, listen to your grannies, if you keep pulling that face and it will stay like that for ever ie spend the bulk of your time smiling and laughing and the wrinkles in your face will show it, spend all your time angry and frowning and that expression will be locked in (apart from of course the plastic fantastics but on the whole they tend to be shallow conservatives). So if you're a grumblebum your're gonna end up looking like one on the other hand if you're caring and sharing and happy go lucky people will visibly recognise you as such.
Even posture counts, walk around like you've got half a dozen brass rods shoved up your Kyber Pass ( http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/slang/khyber_pass_1 [cockneyrhy...lang.co.uk] ) and people will pretty much accurately guess your a conservative.