Beauty in Politics research, An experiment:

Politics as beauty contest

Perhaps interest in politics has dropped off a lot now that the U. S. elections are over (for this year). But there's still some interesting political science that came up before the big event.

Even though political scientists, year in and year out, are as busy publishing as any other kind, quite a number of research announcements were noted recently outside of traditional professional venues. That has tapered off now, but there were a number of items that seem to call for some comment here. So I'll do some of that despite what is bound to be a declining interest in the subject.

A perennial favorite of election-oriented political research centers around questions of how the appearance of a candidate affects electoral success. That's no different this year. Here's a fairly typical example:

A Pretty Face Can Make A Difference In Whom You Vote For (10/30/08)

According to new Northwestern University research, it is not at all surprising that everyone also is talking about the great looks of vice presidential hopeful Palin.

Whether or not you believe the McCain campaign's $150,000 expenditure for Palin's wardrobe and the much-talked-about salary of her makeup artist are over the top, the decision to play up the looks of the former beauty queen is a winning strategy.

Even in 2008, a perception of competence -- a strong predictor of whether people will vote for political candidates -- is not enough to give women the winning edge in political contests, according to the new Northwestern psychology study.

For both men and women, female political candidates needed to be seen as attractive as well as competent to get their votes. ...

While gender bias related to a female candidate's attractiveness was consistent across both male and female voters, good looks was almost all that mattered in predicting men's votes for female candidates. And, true to prevailing stereotypes, competence was almost all that mattered in predicting men's votes for male candidates.

The idea that good looks positively affects electoral success has been researched many times – as well as being often suspected by a lot of people who aren't professional – in all kinds of elections from student councils on up.

The new research I want to examine here was not entirely, or even primarily, about the importance of attractiveness in winning elections. Instead, experimental participants were first asked to rate candidates independently, based on their photos, on four different attributes: "competence", "dominance", and "approachability", as well as "attractiveness".

The politicians in question were actually candidates in 2006 U. S. Congressional elections. The politicians' photos were then presented in pairs actually competing with each other. Experiment participants were asked to chose which of each pair they would vote for if the office were actually the U. S. presidency.

The resulting data were analyzed in various ways. First, in comparison of participants' voting choice to how they had rated the candidates on each of the four attributes. Second, in comparison of candidates' gender and facial appearance to actual Congressional election outcomes. And third, in comparison between how the candidates won or lost in the simulated presidential election and in the actual Congressional election.

Since I want to focus just on the attractiveness issue, I won't attempt to summarize all the results here. You can find the summary in the research paper itself (citation below). I'll mention only two specific observations: (1) "Female candidates were more likely to win votes if they were more attractive." (2) "Male voters were significantly more likely to vote for candidates that appeared attractive." (I presume these statements represent correlations between opinions of attractiveness and voting behavior of each experimental participant.)

Now, it may be true as the research asserts, that attractiveness matters more for female candidates, while a perceptions of "competence" is relatively more important for male candidates. However, the attractiveness of male candidates (especially in contests exclusively between two males) is a still a net positive.

There's another possibility that should be considered even when voters seem to make their voting choices based on judgment of "competence" of male (or female, for that matter) candidates. Namely, that "attractiveness" (perhaps in a form not consciously associated with the term) might bias this judgment. One has to wonder exactly what visual characteristics might signify "competence" to voters, and whether certain factors – such as a "strong jawbone" (for a male) – don't contribute simultaneously to judgments of both attractiveness and competence.