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Democrats and Republicans Can Be Differentiated from Their Faces

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  • Nicholas O Rule
  • Nalini Ambady

Abstract

Background: Individuals' faces communicate a great deal of information about them. Although some of this information tends to be perceptually obvious (such as race and sex), much of it is perceptually ambiguous, without clear or obvious visual cues. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we found that individuals' political affiliations could be accurately discerned from their faces. In Study 1, perceivers were able to accurately distinguish whether U.S. Senate candidates were either Democrats or Republicans based on photos of their faces. Study 2 showed that these effects extended to Democrat and Republican college students, based on their senior yearbook photos. Study 3 then showed that these judgments were related to differences in perceived traits among the Democrat and Republican faces. Republicans were perceived as more powerful than Democrats. Moreover, as individual targets were perceived to be more powerful, they were more likely to be perceived as Republicans by others. Similarly, as individual targets were perceived to be warmer, they were more likely to be perceived as Democrats. Conclusions/Significance: These data suggest that perceivers' beliefs about who is a Democrat and Republican may be based on perceptions of traits stereotypically associated with the two political parties and that, indeed, the guidance of these stereotypes may lead to categorizations of others' political affiliations at rates significantly more accurate than chance guessing.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas O Rule & Nalini Ambady, 2010. "Democrats and Republicans Can Be Differentiated from Their Faces," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(1), pages 1-7, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0008733
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008733
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    Cited by:

    1. Potrafke, Niklas & Rösch, Marcus & Ursprung, Heinrich, 2020. "Election systems, the “beauty premium” in politics, and the beauty of dissent," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    2. Luciana Carraro & Luigi Castelli & Claudia Macchiella, 2011. "The Automatic Conservative: Ideology-Based Attentional Asymmetries in the Processing of Valenced Information," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(11), pages 1-6, November.
    3. 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.
    4. Luciana Carraro & Paolo Negri & Luigi Castelli & Massimiliano Pastore, 2014. "Implicit and Explicit Illusory Correlation as a Function of Political Ideology," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(5), pages 1-6, May.
    5. Kelman, Steven & Hong, Sounman, 2012. ""Hard," "Soft," or "Tough Love": What Kinds of Organizational Culture Promote Successful Performance in Cross-Organizational Collaborations?," Working Paper Series rwp12-005, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    6. Carmelo Licata & Pierre-Guillaume Méon, 2016. "Partisan stereotypes," Working Papers CEB 16-037, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    7. Kelman, Steven J. & Hong, Sounman, 2012. "Hard, Soft, or Tough Love: What Kinds of Organizational Culture Promote Successful Performance in Cross-Organizational Collaborations?," Scholarly Articles 8506868, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    8. Poutvaara, Panu & Graefe, Andreas, 2022. "Do Americans Favor Female or Male Politicians? Evidence from Experimental Elections," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264117, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    9. Licata, Carmelo & Méon, Pierre-Guillaume, 2024. "Attractiveness vs. Partisan stereotypes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 219(C), pages 284-304.

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