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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."
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.
There are two things Liberals hate!!!!!
1) Red-necks, and
2) Stereotyping
Statistical significance can't be pinned down to a number like .8% in the general case - statistical significance is hugely dependent upon the sample size. However, the parent poster is correct in that the article was referring to statistical significance, not necessarily to a huge correlation. Generally speaking, a study like this makes an assumption that there is no connection between appearance and political affiliation (i.e. the average accuracy of these guesses should be something like 50% - could be higher or lower depending on how the study was executed - if there were 3 possible parties to choose from instead of two for example, or if it was well known that 90% of the participants all belonged to a given party). They then execute an experiment which provides evidence for or against that hypothesis. Whatever they were expecting (let's say it was 50% correct answers if it was totally random), they found 60% correct answers - and because of the number of people participating in the study, they determined that the chances that they would find 60% correct answers if the guesses really were random (i.e. there was no hint from appearance) would have been astronomically small. In this way, 60% correct can give incredibly convincing evidence that appearance is linked to political affiliation, even if that link is relatively subdued (after all, 60% is not that much more than 50%).
Sure, the Republican candidate is usually the one with a blue suit jacket with American Flag pin, white shirt and tie. Often they have the jacket slung over their shoulder and their sleeves rolled up.
The Democratic candidate, of course, is the one with a blue suit jacket with American Flag pin, white shirt and tie. Look for them carrying their jacket slung over their shoulder with their sleeves rolled up.
Then there's hair. Republicans either have naturally good hair, or they overcompensate so much that their hair looks like a mutated doughboy helmet. They never have beards. The Democrats on the other hand either have obviously elaborate and expensive haircuts, although many of them just have naturally good hair. Key point: they're always clean shaven.
Now as to actual policies -- don't get me started on that.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Please note that Churchill was English. Liberal and conservative are totally different over there. Liberal means anti-government intervention, conservative means the opposite. For example Margaret Thatcher called Ronald Reagan "the greatest liberal of our time". So yeah, that makes sense- if you're naive you think that markets and good faith will make everything work out ok. When you get older and wise enough to know better, you want society to step in and fix shit.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?