Political Profiling

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