Abstract
BackgroundIndividuals' 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 FindingsHere 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/SignificanceThese 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.
Highlights
People ubiquitously draw conclusions about others based on their appearance and behaviors [1,2]
Study 1 Data were analyzed using signal detection in which Democrat candidates categorized as Democrats were counted as hits (M = .52, SD = .07) and Republican candidates categorized as Democrats were counted as false-alarms (M = .44, SD = .09)
Participants were able to categorize targets according to their political affiliation significantly better than chance guessing [M = .57, SD = .08; t(28) = 4.41, p,.001, r = .64] and measures of response bias indicated that participants showed a slight tendency to categorize targets as Republicans more often than Democrats (M = .01, SD = .04)
Summary
People ubiquitously draw conclusions about others based on their appearance and behaviors [1,2]. Visually obvious characteristics such as age, race, and sex are rapidly and readily perceived from facial appearance [3,9,10]. The rates of accuracy in perceiving sexual orientation are not as high as those for age, race, and sex, . Rather, characteristics such as sexual orientation and religious group membership tend to be fairly ambiguous to perceivers. Individuals’ faces communicate a great deal of information about them 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
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