magazine issue 9 2008 / Issue 8

The Surprising Effect of Facial Appearance on Political Decision-Making

• written by Theresa DiDonato
• edited by Yudit Namer

Ballew and Todorov (2007) decided to figure out the relation between governors’ electability and “looking competent.” Their previous research had established that people value competence in their elected officials above all other traits (Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005). This earlier work also revealed that competence judgments were surprisingly good at predicting senate race election outcomes. Turning to governors’ races, Ballew and Todorov (2007) first verified that we do indeed make personality judgments from quick glances at people’s faces, supporting previous research (Willis & Todorov, 2006). They then demonstrated that rapid competence judgments, based only on pictures of candidates’ faces, could predict gubernatorial election results. In other words, participants’ quick competence ratings, made after seeing candidates’ pictures for only 100 milliseconds, identified the winner at a rate significantly better than chance. These participants did not know the candidates, nor did they have access to information about their policies or track-records. All they saw was his or her face. Incredibly, these rapid inferences of competence were also positively associated with the proportion of actual votes received by the candidates; in other words, the more competence attributed to a candidate from a quick glance at his photo, the higher proportion of votes he tended to receive in the actual election.

The intrigue and appeal of these findings are further enhanced by the researchers’ discovery that judgment speed mattered. They found that immediate, first impressions of competence, made after seeing an image for only 100 milliseconds, weresuperior to deliberative judgments in anticipating the winner of an election (Ballew & Todorov, 2007). This finding seems counterintuitive: how could gut feelings outperform reflective thinking? At the same time, it fits well with one research study focused not on candidate preferences, but on strawberry jam. Wilson and Schooler (1991) asked participants to taste and rate the quality of different jams, and then tested the “accuracy” of these ratings by comparing them with evaluations offered by trained tasting experts. Results showed that when participants were instructed to reflect on why they liked or disliked the jams, they produced ratings that did not corresponded with the experts’ ratings as well as those who simply rated the jams without reflection.
What is it about judging unfamiliar candidates and unfamiliar jams that champions intuition over careful reflection? In both cases, our preferences are formed outside of our awareness. In attempting to justify a first impression that perhaps came to us through nonverbal channels, we consciously construct plausible explanations. For example, if asked to analyze why we dislike a strawberry jam, we think and generate rational explanations: because of its thickness, tartness, or sweetness. As we think about these new reasons, they affect how we feel about the jam, ultimately changing our attitude (Wilson & Schooler, 1991). When it comes to candidates’ faces, forming reasons for our competence judgments shifts our initial impressions without adding real information, making them less reliable predictors of election outcomes.

It is alluring to think that a competent-looking face alone can win an election, but money, political backing, and competent behavior are still critical to a candidate’s campaign success. At the same time, it is possible that political parties choose to back competent-looking people and organizations might preferentially donate money to competent-looking candidates. What we do know is that the effect of a candidate’s nonverbal information is often overlooked, and some voters rely on it more than others.