Facial appearance affects voting decisions

Human groups are unusual among primates in that our leaders are often 5 democratically selected. Many social judgements are made using only facial 6 information and here we examined the potential influence of facial perceptions 7 on leadership elections. We address this possibility using a case study of the 8 2004 US presidential candidates George Bush and John Kerry. We removed 9 recognition effects by applying the difference between their faces to a neutral, 10 unfamiliar face, and then measured how the difference in their facial 11 physiognomies influenced attributions and hypothetical voting decisions. The 12 ‘plus-Bush’ and ‘plus-Kerry’ faces were seen to possess different but 13 potentially valued leadership traits. For voting, preference for face version was 14 context-dependent. Raters preferred the plus-Bush face as a war-time leader 15 and the plus-Kerry face as a peace-time leader. We also examined voting to 16 computer graphic manipulations of masculinity showing that masculine faces 17 were voted for more in war-time and feminine faces in peace-time contexts, 18 suggesting that attitudes to sexual dimorphism in faces play an important role 19 in voting decisions. Both findings demonstrate that voter’s attitudes to the 20 physical appearance of politicians may interact with their perceptions of the 21 current political climate to determine voting behaviour. Such flexible 22 leadership choice may reflect the selection of leaders who are most beneficial 23 to the individuals of a group at a particular time or in a particular situation

The cognitive processes underlying impression change

Two experiments explored the causes and consequences of impression change. Subjects changed their impressions when they preferred an expectancy-inconsistent explanation for an expectancy-deviant event but not when they preferred an expectancy-consistent explanation for it. Subjects had better recall of behaviors that were consistent with their impression when either no explanation or an expectancy-consistent explanation was provided for the event. When an expectancy-inconsistent explanation was provided, subjects recalled behaviors that were inconsistent with their impression better. However, there was no relation between subjects' judgments and their recall of the target's behaviors. Subjects' judgments and recall were not influenced by the presence or absence of a specific expectation for the target, but rather, were determined by normative expectations for people's behavior. Finally, impression change did not lead to the formation of a separate representation of the target. The implications of these results for models of person memory are discussed.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio