Voters Swayed By Candidates Who Share Their Looks

iandoh writes "Stanford researchers have found that voters are subconsciously swayed by candidates who share their facial features. In three experiments, researchers at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab 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."

Comments

Re:Mark this article

[yali]

To all the people tagging this "correlation is not causation," do you even know what you're talking about? This was a randomized experiment.

I'm not saying this is a perfect study -- there might be plenty of other things wrong with it. But the phrase "correlation is not causation" has an actual meaning. It is not just a synonym for "I had a kneejerk reaction to dislike this study but I can't say why."

Obama Is White

[Doc Ruby]

Barack Obama looks exactly like his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, except Barack's skin is darker and his hair curlier.

Obama is half "Black" and half "White". He's been called "Black" so many times, it's only fair to call him "White". Especially because he looks just like his White family.

Re:Obama Is White

[Doc Ruby]

Of course not "exactly". No two people, even identical twins at 10 minutes old, look "exactly" alike.

The point is that Obama and his grandfather resemble each other so much more closely than they differ, other than Obama's skin color, that they are very clearly more closely related than most any two White people. Yet Obama is designated as "other" by White people.

Yes, that one characteristic of his appearance has quite a lot of disproportionate power in people's affiliation with him, as the research this story discusses documents. In fact, there is no real "Black" or "White" or "Mulatto" category truly distinct from one another in America, except among a very small minority who have no ancestors who weren't descended from only subsaharan Africans, or whose African ancestors are many hundreds or thousands of generations distant. In fact, nearly everyone in America is a "Mulatto", and especially among "Black" Americans. And most especially among people in the South, who act most completely opposite that fuzzy status. Which I suppose is "human nature", the nature of people whose power over each other is based on "Us" vs "Them", even if it's completely contrived, and perhaps especially when the boundaries are contrived, and the crossing of them is encouraged by their merely nominal, though forceful, enforcement.

Re:Mark this article

[Ascoo]

Yes it's true that correlation does not always equal causation, but causation does tend to result in correlation.

err. it's a bit more than "tend to result in"

If causation, then correlation.
or equivalently...
If no correlation, than no causation.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that this has been scientifically proven, go and select your candidate.

Re:how demoralizing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap. http://blog.cleveland.com/earlyedition/2007/05/artslife_clothes_shopping_with.html

Re:Mark this article

[WCguru42]

Just like there are people who post without reading the parent. Reading comprehension is a wonderful thing.