IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/socsci/v96y2015i2p430-443.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Blinded by Beauty? Physical Attractiveness and Candidate Selection in the U.S. House of Representatives

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Stockemer
  • Rodrigo Praino

Abstract

type="main"> In this article we show that physical attractiveness matters as a heuristic device for uninformed voters but not for politically savvy voters. Drawing on a two-step experiment, we first ask over 100 students to rank the physical attractiveness of candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives. Second, we create a treatment and a control group comprising each of 1,200 research different subjects. We ask the first group to indicate their vote choice by merely looking at the picture of candidates for the 2008 U.S. House of Representatives elections, while the second group has a picture and a detailed description of the political/professional competence of the contenders at their disposal. We find that our first group of study subjects representing all those voters who are politically uninformed tend to cast their ballot for the better-looking candidate, whereas the second group, representing politically knowledgeable individuals, choose the more competent candidate. Our experimental study provides evidence that uninformed or politically unknowledgeable voters use political appearance as a heuristic device in casing their ballot at elections.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Stockemer & Rodrigo Praino, 2015. "Blinded by Beauty? Physical Attractiveness and Candidate Selection in the U.S. House of Representatives," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 96(2), pages 430-443, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:96:y:2015:i:2:p:430-443
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ssqu.12155
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hamermesh, Daniel S & Biddle, Jeff E, 1994. "Beauty and the Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1174-1194, December.
    2. Amy King & Andrew Leigh, 2009. "Beautiful Politicians," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 579-593, November.
    3. Larry V. Hedges, 1981. "Distribution Theory for Glass's Estimator of Effect size and Related Estimators," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 6(2), pages 107-128, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. ONO Yoshikuni & ASANO Masahiko, 2020. "Why Beauty Matters: Candidates' Facial Appearance and Electoral Success," Discussion papers 20072, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    2. Panu Poutvaara, 2017. "Beauty in Politics," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 18(01), pages 37-43, April.
    3. Iordanis Kotzaivazoglou & Leonidas Hatzithomas & Eirini Tsichla, 2018. "Gender stereotypes in advertisements for male politicians: longitudinal evidence from Greece," International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, Springer;International Association of Public and Non-Profit Marketing, vol. 15(3), pages 333-352, September.
    4. repec:ces:ifofor:v:18:y:2017:i:1:p:37-43 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Niclas Berggren & Henrik Jordahl & Panu Poutvaara, 2010. "The Right Look: Conservative Politicians Look Better and their Voters Reward it," CESifo Working Paper Series 3310, CESifo.
    2. Berggren, Niclas & Jordahl, Henrik & Poutvaara, Panu, 2017. "The right look: Conservative politicians look better and voters reward it," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 79-86.
    3. Green, Colin P. & Wilson, Luke B. & Zhang, Anwen, 2023. "Beauty, underage drinking, and adolescent risky behaviours," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 153-166.
    4. Berggren, Niclas & Jordahl, Henrik & Poutvaara, Panu, 2010. "The looks of a winner: Beauty and electoral success," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 8-15, February.
    5. Hamermesh, Daniel S. & Gordon, Rachel A. & Crosnoe, Robert, 2023. "“O Youth and Beauty:” Children's looks and children's cognitive development," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 275-289.
    6. Dilmaghani, Maryam, 2020. "Beauty perks: Physical appearance, earnings, and fringe benefits," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    7. Alexander Dilger & Laura Lütkenhöner & Harry Müller, 2015. "Scholars’ physical appearance, research performance, and feelings of happiness," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(2), pages 555-573, August.
    8. Gründler, Klaus & Potrafke, Niklas & Wochner, Timo, 2024. "The beauty premium of politicians in office," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 298-311.
    9. Astghik Mavisakalyan, 2016. "Looks matter: Attractiveness and employment in the former soviet union," Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre Working Paper series WP1604, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School.
    10. Kseniya Bortnikova, 2020. "Beauty and Productivity: A Meta-Analysis," Working Papers IES 2020/18, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Jun 2020.
    11. Linn-Brit Bakkenbüll & Stephanie Kiefer, 2015. "Are Attractive Female Tennis Players More Successful? An Empirical Analysis," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(4), pages 443-458, November.
    12. Todd R. Jones & Joseph Price, 2017. "Information And The Beauty Premium In Political Elections," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(4), pages 677-683, October.
    13. Mavisakalyan, Astghik, 2018. "Do employers reward physical attractiveness in transition countries?," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 38-52.
    14. Goulão, Catarina & Lacomba, Juan Antonio & Lagos, Francisco & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2024. "Weight, attractiveness, and gender when hiring: A field experiment in Spain," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 132-145.
    15. Deng, Weiguang & Li, Dayang & Zhou, Dong, 2019. "Beauty and Job Accessibility: New Evidence from a Field Experiment," GLO Discussion Paper Series 369, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    16. Sonia Oreffice & Climent Quintana-Domeque, 2012. "A Matter of Weight? The Role of Spouses. Physical Attractiveness on Hours of Work," CHILD Working Papers Series 7, Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) - CCA.
    17. Lex Borghans & Angela Lee Duckworth & James J. Heckman & Bas ter Weel, 2008. "The Economics and Psychology of Personality Traits," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(4).
    18. von Hinke Kessler Scholder S, 2009. "Genetic Markers as Instrumental Variables: An Application to Child Fat Mass and Academic Achievement," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 09/25, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    19. Li, Xilin & Hsee, Christopher K., 2021. "Free-riding and cost-bearing in discrimination," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 80-90.
    20. Jason Beck, 2022. "Exploring the Link Between Wages and Psychological Capital," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, , vol. 34(2), pages 250-274, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:96:y:2015:i:2:p:430-443. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0038-4941 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.