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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."
I work for a company, that is run mostly by women, but the thing is that all the women that work there, they ALL Look like clones. Or they get hired because they look like the owners, as to give them the comfort in what "looks familiar" or to the fact the women, mimic the looks ...no, they all just look so similar makes me thinks it is more common than we think.
I've wondered for a while if part of what makes white voters more likely to accept Obama as the first black president is the fact that, despite his dark skin color, he has very European facial features. Andrew Sullivan has recently been posting pictures of Obama's (white) grandfather, to whom the presidential candidate bears a striking resemblance.
Obviously, it's impossible to give a truly satisfying answer to such a counterfactual, but I can't help but suspect that if Obama had more stereotypically African features---you know what I mean---that he would not be in the position he is in now.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
The usage of the original phrase really bothers me.
While correlation does not prove causation, it sure does imply causation. It's probably about as close to the definition of imply that I can come up with. The only way I can see the phrase making sense is to use the logic definition of suggest as a logically necessary consequence. Then the original usage may have held a meaning of While causation implies correlation, correlation does not imply causation, basically saying if there is causation, then correlation will follow. So finding correlations is extremely useful, but picking out the root cause of the correlation can be quite difficult, especially when there are multiple factors in play all feeding back on each other.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
With apologies to Tolstoy, beautiful people are all alike; every butt-ugly person is butt-ugly in their own way. You'd only appeal to those butt-ugly people that look like you.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
People tend to like people who are similar to themselves. The old saw "birds of a feather" bit actually rings true a fair amount of the time.
Of course, there's no guarantee that the person who looks vaguely similar to me actually DOES share my views, but if I have no other information to go with, then it's probably a better indicator of who to go with than a coin toss.
Genetics and life experience work together to shape our looks, and those two things also shape our attitudes and actions.
The best explanation is though that despite the great efforts we go through to try and train it out of people, all other things being equal they still prefer in-groups to out-groups. The root of this likely comes from things such as kin selection and the generally tribal nature of early man.