from ‘Lip Service’
by Marianne LaFrance
It is said that a politician’s personality opens or
closes doors but actually how a candidate’s personality is perceived holds more
sway. There is, in fact, a startling consensus among voters across several
countries as to what traits they want to see in their political leaders. The
desired traits are extroversion and trustworthiness.
Across the ideological spectrum, these two traits
trump all other, ostensibly relevant characteristics. When people think about
family, friends, co-workers and celebrities, extroversion and trustworthiness
are not the first traits that come to mind., but they are at the top of voters’
lists for what they want in a political leader.
How do constituents detect a candidate’s level of
extroversion and trustworthiness? Despite claims by some that they can look a
person in the eye and know whether that person can be trusted, the eyes
themselves are not a measure of character. The muscles around the eyes are
where the cues lie.
We glean impressions of people from what the social
psychologist Nalini Ambady calls “thin slices,”, glimpses of their faces and
brief sounds of their voices. Indeed, psychologists have a wealth of data
showing that impressions about what a person is like are made extraordinarily
quickly and from amazingly little information. Often enough, these impressions
are dead on. In one study, research subjects were shown pictures of unfamiliar
candidates for less than second and asked to hazard a guess about whether they
would win the election in which they were running. Not everyone was up to the
task, but a significant number were able to do so with striking accuracy.
These findings deserve a second look because of what
they tell us about what the research participants were actually able to do.
Subjects were not asked whom they personally would vote for after having a
fleeting glance at the photograph. Rather, they were asked to consider what a
majority of voters would do. The essence of their accuracy was in knowing other
people’s preferences in political candidates. Faces matter hugely in our
assessment of people, and many of us are on the same page about what those
assessments are.
Do faces also tell us something about voters?
Amazingly, yes. Citizens who lean in a liberal direction smile more on average
than citizens who bend in a conservation direction. Does this mean that
liberals are happier than conservatives? No, actually conservatives are
happier. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, 47 percent
conservative Republicans in the United States described themselves as “very
happy” as compared with only 28 percent of liberal Democrats.
So, why do liberals smile more than conservatives, if
it is not because they’re feeling jollier than conservatives? You will recall
that while spontaneous smiles reflect positive emotion, people also smile
voluntarily, and those smiles reflect not inner emotion but other intentions.
In short, liberals’ smiles signal a more cooperative, non-aggressive
orientation. This sounds like a little like the poet Robert Frost’s definition
of a liberal as a man too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel.
New findings also indicate that liberals are perceived
differently from conservatives by those who do not know their political slant.
If a person comes as warm, it is more likely that he or she is a Democrat. If a
person comes across as powerful, the data show that he or she is more likely to
be a Republican.
‘Lip Service’
by Marianne LaFrance
