Appearance Matters: Candidates' Faces May Predict Success

Oct. 22, 2007— -- If faces are any indication, the 2008 campaign may already be over.

People who are shown candidates' faces for less than one second can correctly predict the winner of gubernatorial and senatorial races significantly better than chance alone, according to a new study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, performed by researchers at Princeton University, between 64 and 120 undergraduate students were enrolled in each of several experiments. They were asked to look briefly at pictures of two gubernatorial or senatorial candidates they did not know.

They were then asked to "use their gut" to decide immediately who was more competent based on facial appearance alone.

The best results, surprisingly, came from an experiment in which the participants had to choose the more competent candidate for actual 2006 gubernatorial and senatorial elections — before the elections had taken place.

In these trials, participants could correctly predict the winner of gubernatorial races 69 percent of the time, and senatorial races 72 percent of the time — despite having never seen the candidates.

"One implication is that voting decisions are not necessarily rational decisions," said lead study author Alexander Todorov, assistant professor of psychology at Princeton University. "You should get competence from objective records of performance, instead of facial appearance, but ... I think they may not be doing this consciously; it could be something that they are subconsciously engaged in."

Psychological experts not affiliated with the study agreed that voters may indeed — either consciously or subconsciously — be powerfully influenced by a candidate's appearance.