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Political Affiliation Can Be Differentiated By Appearance
quaith writes "It's not the way they dress, but the appearance of their face. A study published in PLoS One by Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University used closely cropped greyscale photos of people's faces, standardized for size. Undergrads were asked to categorize each person as either a Democrat or Republican. In the first study, students were able to differentiate Republican from Democrat senate candidates. In the second, students were able to differentiate the political affiliation of other college students. Accuracy in both studies was about 60% — not perfect, but way better than chance."
I'd to see Rush squeeze into one of those bad boys.
This should be easy enough. Hipsters are liberal, hicks are conservative. Pretty easy to identify them from facial hair amongst other cues.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Factor 1 (46% of variance explained) consisted of high loadings on likeability (.94) and trustworthiness (.97) and low loadings on dominance (.11) and facial maturity (.14). Factor 2 (42% of variance explained) consisted of high loadings on dominance (.92) and facial maturity
My grandmother used to tell me something along the lines of what is often misattributed to Churchill:
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
And I would also like to point out for the college students that society (especially high school) often pigeonholes people and defines who they are on how they look. The individual sometimes has no choice and sometimes just accepts it and goes with it in order to belong. If you look older when you're young and people might instinctively treat you like a cold Republican. Always looked young and innocent? Then a warm Democrat.
Would be an explanation that agrees with the correlation the research drew to define the deviation from random guessing but nothing conclusive.
My work here is dung.
What a dumb study. Of course you can pick a party affiliation by appearance. First off, if you always say a black guy is a Democrat, you'd be right 90% of the time, based on voting records. That would give you 60% overall correct, even if everything else was 50,50, assuming a sample set that roughly mirrors the population.
This is my sig.
When I work the polls each year I try to pass the time by guessing the party affiliations of my voters.
"Hmm, large SUV and business suit. Republican."
"Large breasted college age chick. Democrat."
"Subaru Outback and peacenik bumper stickers. Green Party."
"Pick-up truck and AR-15. Libertarian."
It's amazing how bored you get working a 15 hour day when you only get 40 voters.... ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Lets play a game someone's driving a clunker and they have 80 bumper stickers on it, which way to they lean?
60% versus 50%? How is that WAY better?
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Considering that you have a 50% chance of picking the right one when it just is up to chance, 60% ain't impressing me much.
There are two things Liberals hate!!!!!
1) Red-necks, and
2) Stereotyping
Politicians are all the same, regardless of their affiliated party.
I'm a registered Independant you insensitive clod (well, I was when I was in a state that required you to claim a group to vote in primaries). I don't pick a candidate based on part affiliation.
More CHOICE than ever before!
http://tinyurl.com/democratface
http://tinyurl.com/republicanface
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
The Churchill quote only demonstrates how clever rhetoric does not an argument make.
I am often amazed at how powerful a beautiful but specious assertion can be. Sometimes it is a compelling analogy that has no actual bearing on the topic at hand. Other times (as in this Churchill case) it is a clever dichotomy that begs the question. This particular quote is a wonderful example of begging the question. It is no more possible to support conservatism with it than it is possible to literally pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
That was an analogy, wasn't it? I hope you didn't find it too beguiling.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Where's the "correlation is not causation" tag?
And I have invented a method for telling if someone is a criminal by taking various measurements of their head! I think I will call this "phrenology".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Oh the sweet irony of that quote with the current popularity of Fox "News" :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Admittedly, i've only been browsing through the text and images, but i haven't seen anything to warrant a statement like the following:
In sum, the finding that political affiliation can be accurately judged from targets' faces extends our knowledge of the power of facial cues in forming accurate impressions of others.
And looking at the results of study 3: Standard deviations that are consistently about twice the size of the difference of means are telling me only one thing: don't bother.
Next time, click both links before you post.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
There's also the neurological differences between left and right leaning people. If your neurology might lead one toward one direction it might be that trait also carried some... *gasp* physiognomic traits.
Might be neat to do this experiment again by having all the people in the pics clean shaven, wearing a plain white T, and having a neutral facial expression.
Then run it again with the people smiling. Would a smiling face skew the results?
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
You can get much better than 60% simply by differentiating male and female faces, and improve that more by distinguishing age.
Republicans = Blue Ties
Democrats = Red Ties
I never did get that.
I'm not going to state my party affiliation. I'll just say that when I saw that this pointless study was funded by OUR TAX DOLLARS via an NSF grant, I thought, "God help us!"
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Especially since, as has already been pointed out, the quote comes from England where "Liberal" and "Conservative" mean the opposite parties than they do in the US.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
When I think of the libertarians, one of two images usually come to mind:
1. An overweight wife-swapping gun nut with lots of unkept facial hair chomping on a large turkey leg (and getting large pieces of meat stuck in the beard/mustache). In other words, someone who sort of resembles ESR.
2. A rail thin wife-swapping gun nut who's shaved off all his body hair except what's on his head and who gets all his nutrients from a liquid diet that's supposed to make him live 140 years. In other words, picture someone who sort of resembles poo-master and Dual-Action Cleanse spokesperson Klee Irwin.
If you are at all familiar with testing identity of bitrate in music, known as ABX, you will realize that it requires a minimum of 13/16 correct selections, or around an 80% accuracy rate, otherwise it is possible (and perhaps even probable) that the results are flawed due to factors of chance.
My Iguana has better liberal and conservative recognition chances than that.
When the progressives nationalized healthcare system started going up in smoke I assumed eugenics wouldn't stand a chance of coming back, because if you can't force "healthcare" on people then what good is sorting them out by appearance. I'm not sure where this is going unless they truly feel they can get the socialized healthcare (circa germany turn of the century) fully implemented.
Appearance for political stance
Head bumps for intelligence
eyebrows for demeanor
nose shape for whether you should be humanely euthanized.
We've seen this movie before.
Well, I always heard those Germans were sticklers for paperwork. (I'm about one quarter German, by descent.) I've always imagined that the Ethnicity was pretty well documented and substantiated. Probably correlating fairly well to our current conviction/execution : factual guilt ratio. Basically just a wild-ass guess, of course.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Obama isn't a democrat or a republican. He's just another asshole politician with bad ideas, bad leadership and bad execution. It is obvious that just because someone is considered intelligent, does not make them a good leader.
I voted for the guy. Drove seven hours to see him get sworn in, in the freezing cold. "Our generation's JFK!" he was going to be. Pfft. This asshole is destroying America piece by piece. Everything that makes us great, he seeks to undermine. Damn, even Dubya understood the symbolic importance and scientific value of the space program, which has given us so many new technologies over the years and keeps hundreds of thousands of people employed
Somebody needs to do SOMETHING about this idiot - the Republicans sure aren't. They're like babies: the only sound they can babble is "no, no, no, no, no..."
60%, not far enough off from standard deviation to make me care. Just more crap, how much did this study cost me?
You're an idiot.
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has an interesting discussion on TED (<a href="/talks/lang/eng/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html">http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html</a>) about 5 distinct moral values and the different ways liberals and conservatives score on each of them. I can see where those mental differences/preferences might expose themselves physically in dress or emotionally in facial expressions. Speculation yes, but it seems plausible given that there are so many subtle visual clues we each give off that we are very much unaware of.
(helps to preview) Here's the fixed link: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html/
Damn, I wish I hadn't posted in this thread before reading this. +1 Insightful!
Hey buddy,
We've turned -another- century since then, so what did Germany do with their Healthcare in the 2000s?
If they look like the offspring of cousins then they might be Republican... :) Oh course Palin was pretty, but she was also a little "touched" if you know what I mean.
Generally speaking I bet I could get a pretty good guess down anyway regardless of study.
Minority -> Democrat
Old white rich dudes -> Republican
You would like be wrong half the time no matter what, as that is about how many actually bother voting anyway.
When the progressives nationalized healthcare system started going up in smoke I assumed eugenics wouldn't stand a chance of coming back, because if you can't force "healthcare" on people then what good is sorting them out by appearance. I'm not sure where this is going unless they truly feel they can get the socialized healthcare (circa germany turn of the century) fully implemented.
Appearance for political stance
Head bumps for intelligence
eyebrows for demeanor
nose shape for whether you should be humanely euthanized.
We've seen this movie before.
Completely wrong conclusion. This study would be an indicator of facial expression, tension, stress level, and other subtle cues. My guess from experience is that the Reps were more likely to have tension/anger lines, and the Dems were more likely to have silly smiles.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Same socialized healthcare system since 1889, mediocre care after you get old enough you can't afford private healthcare anymore. However I wasn't commenting so much on the healthcare system pro and cons, but that eugenics really can't go anywhere without it, and eugenics really belongs a hundred years behind us. I should have phrased that the turn of last century. It doesn't matter if your black, asian, have a meat face, or are pretty, there's really no reason to categorize anyone based on appearances, or to spend any money studies on it unless your planning on performing some sort of action upon that data.
It's like the stupid story I hear on the news every fricking year at one point or another that tall good looking people are more successful than short ugly people. Who really cares unless we are going to act as a society on that as a grave injustice. There's really limited options on any of these stupid physical characteristic stories as far as actions that can be taken to correct the "problem", and of those options redistribution, abortions, and euthanization have proven to have serious problems.
Of course every party thinks the other party is angrier. Truth is when you get to the ends of both parties there is a lot of anger. I would however say that discontentment is more on the democrats side, because conservatism is more about staying the same, or returning to better times whereas liberalism is about correcting grave injustices right?
Who would be more discontent, the person who wants to change things, or the person who wants them to stay the same? I guess it depends on if things are changing or staying the same :).
Either way, these studies are still BS in my opinion, and the fact that the conclusions are only 60 percent is almost nothing if you have any range of inaccuracy (most polls is what, 3 or 4 percent?).
lol, this study reminds me of something my pediatrics professor said during a lecture: "If you look stupid, chances are, you are!"
(reffering to deformed facial features of retarded kids)
Now, it's up to whoever reads this to choose which side looks more stupid :)
No, it's a troll.
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
Give me a real conservative to vote for, someone who stays out of both my pocket book and my bedroom, someone who restores free markets, someone who slashes corporate subsidies, and someone who restores the principle of personal responsibility in areas such as drugs and medical care and I will vote for him.
Sadly, the closest to a conservative in US politics are Democrats; while far from perfect conservatives, they do better in terms of liberties and fiscal responsibility. Republicans, on the other hand, restrict liberties, want a nanny state, are fiscally irresponsible, and waste even more money than the Democrats on their corporate buddies; Republicans, sadly, are even less conservative than Democrats.
Study says it compared first senators and then college students. There's likely not enough of an age disparity among college students to make age a factor in political affiliation, nor would the average person have sufficient skill at guessing age to reliably distinguish a 19-year-old from a 22-year-old.
And politicians are an edge case - the youngest current senator is a 40-year old Republican and the oldest senator is a 92-year-old Democrat. Senators (and indeed all national politicians) as a class are too different from the mainstream population to make those sorts of generalizations.
= democrat
If you had 10,000 black marbles and 10,000 white marbles, and I wanted you to separate them into two equally-sized piles, one containing approximately 6,000 black marbles and the rest white and one with 4,000 black marbles and the rest white, then this "60% right guesser" is the right man for the job.
I'm assuming he's right 60% of the time for both black and white marbles.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
. . . If they look fat, happy, and rich, they're probably Republicans. If they look malnourished, despondent, and poor, they're probably a democrat.
What idiot, moron, democrat posted this garbage?!?
They also love sausages, fucking, and jokes about death.
Not cuckoo clocks, tho'. That's a myth. Chocolate and and cuckoo's? That's the Swiss for you!
Now, if I said this about Jews, you'd all call me anti-Semite? Right?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Critics of President Obama have called his goals socialist
Those critics are idiots since they dont know what socialist means.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Stop slandering the hicks!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You are confusing the terms "drug warrior" and "pussy whipped" ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I drive an old, white, stickerless van and the FBI has had me on an Anarchy watch list for years.
So yeah.. you can tell by the vehicle-- the fedz happen to be correct!
My Dad is a classic big city East Coast liberal. In the 1960's he participated in civil rights marches, and in the 1980's I heard him constantly bitching about Reagan's economic policies. For the last forty years, he has given tons to homeless people on the street, with one caveat. Instead of throwing them a buck or two, he offers to buy them whatever they want at a nearby fast food joint. Many don't accept (for obvious reasons), but they do, he goes in with them, buys them whatever they want and eats with them.
He's also been self-employed for his entire life.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
The Churchill quote only demonstrates how clever rhetoric does not an argument make....
I propose to tell the difference between liberal and conservative by the appearance of their face when they hear this quote.
A cursory look at TFA indicates that both types of misclassification rates in this study are found to be in the range 40%-50% (approximately in each study). That is piss-poor. For comparison, a typical Bayesian spam filter has both misclassification rates in the 1% range, and people still complain about that.
The correct conclusion should really be that looking only at peoples' faces is a really bad way to gauge political affiliation. Slow news day, eh?
If an individual by his or her body and verbal language suggest that he or she is ENTITLED to be protected from market forces, that individual is a state paternalist (a.k.a. 'liberal'). Think "musician hair" (goatees, soul patch, StalinStache, etc) for males and snootynose voices for females (pinch the nose, crimp the upper lip and with a squeaky voice pronounce the word "college student"). It is one who looks like one cannot get and hold a job.
If an individual by his or her body and verbal language suggest that he or she is NOT ENTITLED to be protected from market forces, that individual is a state minarchist (a.k.a. 'conservative'). Think 'conformity to market expectations' in dress, facial grooming, speech and tastes. It is one who looks like one can get and hold a job.
It's like the Potter Stewart opinion on obscenity "I know it when I see it". Only a fool is not 'conservative' with his or her own money. One's ideology is made manifest when it deals with OTHER people's money.
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
If they look like a Turd Sandwich, they are Republican.
If they look like a Giant Douche, they are a Democrat.
Yet, it still makes sense IN the US, if you read it with the US definitions of Liberal and Conservative.
Interesting world, eh?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
There's two types of conservative, fiscal and social. Fiscal conservatives want to control the budget through less spending or more tax. Social conservatives want to control your body and bedroom.
Fiscal liberals say things like "deficits don't matter" (Rummy), social liberals say things like "I have a dream".
Out of the possible combinations my personal preference is fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Yeah, that usually means more taxes but nobody ever claimed civilization was cheap.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I suspected this kind of thing when I started noticing those election-day photos of the rally headquarters for the various candidates. "All of the chicks in the Republican audience are always smokin' hot babes", I'd think to myself.
And then it dawned on me. If there is a correlation between appearance and political leanings, how would any causal relationship work? I think the causation of politics determining appearance is the easier one to spot. Most conservatives I know seem to place more of an emphasis on appearance, while the liberals I know place more of an emphasis on ideas; feeling that ideas will stand or fall on their own merit, regardless of the appearance of the messenger. So, liberals don't see as much need for dressing up before trying to pitch their ideas.
Now, the causation from appearance to politics is a little more subtle. My suspicion is that the people who are "less beautiful" are the ones who spend more of their time on the outside of popularity. They're they people who never made the ballot for prom queen, didn't get asked to the school dance, didn't have as many romantic opportunities. They got more of a taste of what it's like to be a "have not" or to be outside of the majority. This experience, I believe, can cause them to have the increased empathy and tendency to "look out for others" that seems to characterize liberal thought.
On the other hand, the people are very attractive or physically gifted had an easier time of things. Athletic success came easier to the "natural born athletes", and the pretty or charismatic people had an easier time getting others to back their ideas or plans. Things just went a little easier for them. Because we can only experience the world through our own eyes, I can see how the "beautiful people" could believe that (as it was for them) one only needs to apply themselves to a goal and it'll work out. This could give rise to the "anybody willing to work hard will find success" mindset that we tend to see in conservatives.
Hmm, from Wikipeida on the UK Lib Dem site:
"They support multilateral foreign policy; they opposed British participation in the War in Iraq and supported the withdrawal of troops from the country, and are the most pro-European Union of the three main parties in the UK. The party has strong environmentalist values - favouring renewable energy and commitments to deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Since their foundation, Lib Dems have advocated electoral reform to use proportional representation, replacing the House of Lords with an elected chamber, and cutting government departments."
sure sounds like republicans to me.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Apparently you don't know what fascist or communist means. Really, you should get your education from somewhere other than Fox News.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
60% is just slightly better than tossing a coin.
Go Beyond.
No, I'd say that you have a sub-par command of pointless ethnic stereotypes. Everybody knows that Jews love gold and sacrificing babies, not chocolate and cuckoo clocks.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
"opposed British participation in the War in Iraq"
"sure sounds like republicans to me."
Was Bush a Democrat and nobody told us?
Dilbert RSS feed
Seriously, what's next? Articles on how you can determine how socialist-leaning someone is by reading their scalp?
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo
( page 123)
Actually, I try to watch a broad spectrum of all the news outlets...from the two extremes (Fox vs MSNBC) to everything in between.
I dunno...let's see, under the Obama administration, the federal govt has pretty much taken ownership of multiple banks, and private businesses, and is looking to instill even more laws telling said businesses what they can and can't do..and what they can and cannot pay.
That certainly doesn't sound much like Capitalism to me...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The quote refers to the old Liberal party, not the Lib Dems. The Liberals were the traditionally party of business interests (and so favoured the Commons) and the urban/suburban middle class. They supported free trade, and had the support of several protestant churches.
For comparison, the Conservatives were the party of old money (and so favoured the Lords), the rural middle and upper class, the aristocracy, and those associated with them. They were protectionist, imperialist, and were closer to the High Church. Labour were the party of the industrial working class, and were generally socialist
Who cares? It's like the study that proves that Republicans flinch at scary images and Democrats don't.
I might be more impressed once I see 3 studies of the same thing, but perhaps that's not soft enough for social science.
We should all hold hands and think supportive thoughts about the researchers. "Kumbaya..."
1) Banks are taken over by the government every year since the inception of the FDIC. The FDIC promptly sells them off (to some other bank). The ownership by the FDIC is for an extremely short period of time and the sale is usually worked out before they even take control of the failing bank.
2) What are all these other private businesses he's taking over?
3) Capitalism is merely ownership of private property (look it up if you don't believe me). Nothing more. Free markets and everything else is shit that's added on to the concept. You may be thinking of " laissez-faire" capitalism but that's not required to be a "capitalist" nation. In any event, there have never ever been truly free markets. It's not possible to have in the real world, only on paper. I can explain why but think it through and I'm sure you can figure it out.
4) The government telling businesses what they can and can't do has occurred since the inception of the country. It has always been and always will be and has occurred in every country that has existed in all of human history. This will never change. The only difference is to the degree that it occurs. Now, you may think that him telling companies like Goldman Sachs that they are in for new regulations is inappropriate but I don't. They fucked over the country and they are being rewarded for doing it. In other words, they are asking for it.
All the regulations that exist on the books exist for one of two reasons: 1) A lobbying group successfully managed buy enough senators/congressmen to get their way, or 2) a business or particular industry fucked over enough people that congress had to do something about it to keep their jobs.
Finally, neither party gives a flying shit about capitalism, they only care about getting re-elected. The Republicans talk a good game but did you think it was a free market, capitalist idea for Bush to require Medicare by law to NOT negotiate and to pay for drugs at the maximum price while simultaneously massively increasing national debt? Bush also had no problem with oil subsidies. Parties are playing a game and that game is to keep you so confused, you don't know which way is up and they are good at it. In the end, they are in it for themselves. And trust me, they need each other. Neither party could survive a year without the other to blame for everything.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
The Tea Party is a conservative movement, and they seem awfully angry to me. The Left is filled with war protesters, Buddhist mindfulness practitioners, hippies, and potheads, so I think their anger is going to be comparatively checked.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
'FBI has had me on an Anarchy watch list for years'
Now THAT would be a great bumber sticker!
Here we go again!
Oh yeah, really great! Beyond non-sense! Glad that the nazis managed to prove that EUGENICS is a really stupid idea! Remember the face features book? This is real IDIOCRACY
...and if anything but a Republican or Democrat was to be observed, the observers head rapidly expanded until skull breach was achieved.
Studies show that people with more bumper stickers have higher levels of road rage.
*Whoosh*
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Do politicians morph their appearance toward a targeted stereotype?
Birth is the leading cause of death.
So... you want a tiny url to "/libertarianface" to show a picture of a confused Hitler? Is that your point?
Why do I have a feeling I'm going to walk away from this exchange convinced that you write emails to shows like "The Daily Show" telling them that their jokes are wrong.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
from the whole quote you only identified this?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.