Conservative political beliefs have been linked to heightened stress reactivity and protective cognitive biases. Using a facial discrimination task designed to measure perceptions of threat (vs. non threat) and dominance (vs. submissiveness), I show that Republicans demonstrate a greater tendency to interpret ambiguous facial stimuli as expressing more threatening and more dominant emotions than do Democrats. The findings suggest the political ideology may be associated with basic social perceptual sensitivities

Jacob Vigil

English

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                                                                                                                                                   Political Affiliation    1 
 
 
Running head: FACIAL EXPRESSION PROCESSING 
 
 
 
Facial Expression Processing Varies with Political Affiliation  
 
Jacob M. Vigil 
University of North Florida 
 
 
 
 
 
Department of Psychology 
Center for Applied Research in Child and Adolescent Development 
University of North Florida 
Jacksonville, Fl 32224-2673 
E-mail: j.vigil@unf.edu 
URL: http://www.unf.edu/~j.vigil/ 
 
 
 
                                                                                                                                                   Political Affiliation    2 
 
 
Abstract 
 Conservative political beliefs have been linked to heightened stress reactivity and protective 
cognitive biases. Using a facial discrimination task designed to measure perceptions of threat (vs. 
non threat) and dominance (vs. submissiveness), I show that Republicans demonstrate a greater 
tendency to interpret ambiguous facial stimuli as expressing more threatening and more 
dominant emotions than do Democrats. The findings suggest the political ideology may be 
associated with basic social perceptual sensitivities.   
                                                                                                                                                   Political Affiliation    3 
 
 
Political ideologies encompass people’s beliefs about public policies, judicial philosophy, 
and governmental strategies for mediating domestic and international crises. Previous studies 
have found that individuals who identify with conservative, Republican ideals show greater 
physiological arousal to aversive stimuli (e.g., load noises and disturbing images) and are more 
likely to fear, and to be motivated to control uncertain situations than individuals who identify 
with more liberal, Democrat ideals (1, 2). These findings suggest that individual differences in 
certain aspects of political idealism, such as the belief that the government should react to 
international conflicts with either more cautious (Democrat) or more assertive (Republican) 
response tactics, may be rooted in neurocognitive processing of threatening stimuli. Another 
factor that may covary with political orientation is how people interpret trait impressions and 
respond to ambiguous social information in others.  
Facial expression processing tasks can be used to examine implicit trait impressions and 
emotional reactions to other people. Studies that use these techniques suggest that humans are 
particularly sensitive to evaluate other people along two underlying dimensions of social 
processing (3), cues that signal interpersonal trustworthiness and hence threat versus non-threat, 
and cues that signal personal competencies, such as dominance versus submissiveness (4, 5). In 
this preliminary study, I examined the hypothesis that political orientation is associated with 
individual differences in perceptions of threat-level and dominance-status from ambiguous facial 
stimuli (3).  I predicted that individuals who affiliate with the political party that typically 
promotes more aggressive responses to international conflicts, Republicans, would be more 
likely to interpret ambiguous facial stimuli as more threatening than would individuals who 
affiliate with the political party that promotes more diplomacy, Democrats.  
                                                                                                                                                   Political Affiliation    4 
 
 
 Seven hundred forty adult subjects (18-65, mean age = 22.3yrs, 69% females) completed 
a facial expression discrimination task designed to measure perceptual biases in threat and 
dominance impressions. The subjects reported their political affiliation (55% Democrat) 
confidentially with a single (forced-choice) item that asked which political party they tend to 
lean towards (Democrat or Republican). Assessments were conducted during the months 
(February through September, 2008) leading up to the 2008 U.S. presidential election.  
One male and one female actor each portrayed six ambiguous (not representing discrete 
emotions) facial expressions (12 expressions total). Photographs of the actors were taken under 
natural light and were converted to digital sketches and enhanced to be difficult to distinguish 
using digital exposure and blur effects with Corel Painter 9. The sketches were printed on two 
pages of a questionnaire, following the political and demographic items. Under each sketch, 
participants were asked to identify the face as expressing sadness, joy, disgust, surprise, fear, or 
anger. The responses were then coded as either signaling threat (anger, fear, disgust) versus non-
threat (joy, sadness, surprise), and as conveying dominance (joy, anger, disgust) versus 
submissiveness (sadness, fear, surprise), due to the associations between these emotions and the 
corresponding trait impressions (3). 
Chi square tests revealed significant (ps < .01) group differences in perceptions of 
threatening (vs. non-threatening) emotions in six of the twelve sketches. Group differences in 
perceptions of dominant (vs. submissive) emotions were found for seven sketches. As shown in 
Figure 1, Republicans showed a greater tendency to interpret the facial stimuli as expressing 
more threatening and more dominant emotions than did Democrats. 
A regression analysis was then run using the sum of the five sketches that showed higher 
levels of threat interpretation in Republicans (Fig. 1) as the dependent variable and entering 
                                                                                                                                                   Political Affiliation    5 
 
 
participants’ political affiliation, gender, age, and employment-status (each dichotomously 
coded) as independent variables. This analysis revealed that political affiliation was 
independently related to perceptions of threaten facial expressions (β = .12, p < .001). A similar 
analysis, instead entering the sum of the six faces that showed higher levels of dominance 
interpretation in Republicans as the dependent variable revealed a non significant relation 
between political affiliation and perceptions of dominance (p = .08). However, among the sum of 
sketches that were perceived as expressing relatively non-threatening, dominant emotions (see 
the three pairs of sketches in the upper left quadrant of Fig. 1), political affiliation was 
independently associated with perceptions of dominance (β = .07, p = .05).   
Although it is unclear how the processing of social information may be related to many 
political platform policy positions, the findings highlight one potential neurocognitive basis for 
some elements of political idealism. Specifically, the results suggest that individuals who orient 
towards more conservative, Republican ideals have a lower threshold for processing threatening 
stimuli from ambiguous social information, compared to individuals who orient towards more 
liberal, Democratic ideals. These findings may help explain individual differences in the 
advocacy of either more aggressive (Republican) or more diplomatic (Democrat) strategies for 
dealing with domestic (e.g., criminality) and international conflicts.  
                                                                                                                                                   Political Affiliation    6 
 
 
References 
1.  Jost, J.T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A.W. & Sulloway, F.J. Psychol. Bull. 129, 339-375 (2003). 
2.  Oxley, D.R. et al. Science 321, 1667-1670 (2008).  
3.  Vigil, J.M. Behav. Brain Sci. (in press) 
4.  Engell, A.D., Haxby, J.V. & Todorov, A. J. Cognitive Neurosci. 19, 1508-1519 (2007). 
5. Todorov, A., Mandisodza, A.N., Goren, A. & Hall, C.C. Science 308, 1623-1626 (2005).  
                                                                                                                                                   Political Affiliation    7 
 
 
Figure 1 
The x and y axes represent the percentage of people that identified each sketch as expressing 
threatening (vs. non threatening) and dominant (vs. submissive) emotions, respectively. Solid 
borders indicate Democrat scores and dashed borders indicate Republican scores. Non 
overlapping pairs of sketches indicate significant group differences (ps < .01). 
 
1 Dominance
Non 0.5
Threat
A
0
0 0.5
Submissiveness


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Facial Expression Processing Varies with Political Affiliation

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Facial Expression Processing Varies with Political Affiliation

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