http://www.impactlab.com/2008/10/25/swayed-by-looks-who-will-you-vote-for/ A laboratory of the future human experience Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:47:38 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://www.impactlab.com/2008/10/25/swayed-by-looks-who-will-you-vote-for/comment-page-1/#comment-10733 Swayed by Looks? Who will you vote for? « The KeelyNet Blog Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:09:13 +0000 http://www.impactlab.com/2008/10/25/swayed-by-looks-who-will-you-vote-for/#comment-10733 [...] Posted by keelynet on October 27, 2008 “In a paper slated to be published in the December issue of Public Opinion Quarterly, Jeremy Bailenson, an assistant professor of communication, and Shanto Iyengar, the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor in Communication, say that people are subconsciously swayed by candidates who share their facial features. “The field of political science has been dominated by the main ideal that voters are rational and that voters base their decisions on substance and issues and policy,” Bailenson said. “We wanted to say, ‘Well, how much of our decisions are actually based on superficial qualities?’” The answer: More than they expected. In three experiments, the researchers and their graduate students worked with cheap, easy-to-use computer software to morph pictures of about 600 test subjects with photos of politicians. And they kept coming up with the same results: For the would-be voters who weren’t very familiar with the candidates or in perfect lockstep with their positions or political parties, the facial similarity was enough to clinch their votes.” - Source [...] [...] Posted by keelynet on October 27, 2008 “In a paper slated to be published in the December issue of Public Opinion Quarterly, Jeremy Bailenson, an assistant professor of communication, and Shanto Iyengar, the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor in Communication, say that people are subconsciously swayed by candidates who share their facial features. “The field of political science has been dominated by the main ideal that voters are rational and that voters base their decisions on substance and issues and policy,” Bailenson said. “We wanted to say, ‘Well, how much of our decisions are actually based on superficial qualities?’” The answer: More than they expected. In three experiments, the researchers and their graduate students worked with cheap, easy-to-use computer software to morph pictures of about 600 test subjects with photos of politicians. And they kept coming up with the same results: For the would-be voters who weren’t very familiar with the candidates or in perfect lockstep with their positions or political parties, the facial similarity was enough to clinch their votes.” – Source [...]

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