DADS VS. MOMS:

Democrats and Republicans Can Be Differentiated from Their Faces (Nicholas O. Rule, Nalini Ambady, plosone)

People are adept at accurately inferring numerous traits and qualities of others based on their nonverbal behaviors and appearance. Consistent with this, here we found that both professional politicians' and college seniors' political affiliations could be accurately judged from static, grayscale photos of their faces. The basis for these effects appears to rest in perceivers' stereotypes of Republicans as appearing powerful and Democrats as appearing warm [24], [25], with perceptions of Power being a significant predictor of the targets' actual political affiliations.

These data extend what is known about our capacity to make reliable and accurate inferences of others based on their appearance. In particular, these findings add to the literature on the categorization of group memberships that are not perceptually obvious, such as sexual orientation [11] and religious group membership [14], [19]. Similar to what has been found for these other perceptually ambiguous groups, the effects for accuracy in Studies 1 and 2 were not driven by a subset of highly identifiable faces (as shown in Figures 1 and 2). Rather, the distribution of accuracy across targets—with none being entirely accurately categorized and none being entirely inaccurately categorized—represents a general and imperfect ability to accurately infer political group membership from nonverbal and appearance cues. This imperfection is similar to what is found for the distribution of accuracy in other perceptually ambiguous groups [12].

Moreover, the ability to judge political group membership from faces is explicated by perceivers' reliance on stereotypes to make their decisions. Study 3 showed that faces perceived as warm were likely to be those categorized as Democrats in Study 2 and that faces perceived as powerful were likely to be those categorized as Republicans in Study 2. Not surprisingly, these stereotypes lead to perceptual errors. Not at all Democrats appear warm and not all Republicans appear powerful. However, the linearity of these effects is noteworthy: appearing warmer led to a greater chance that a target would be perceived as a Democrat and appearing more powerful led to a greater chance that a target would be perceived as a Republican.

Men are Republican. Women are Democrats.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 13, 2010 3:14 PM