Why Do We Elect Attractive Politicians?
These days, there are many who would label politics an infectious disease. Politicians (especially those residing in Washington, D.C.) are the contagion's carriers. But ironically, the threat of real-life disease may actually be the reason we elected those politicians in the first place, particularly the attractive ones.
It's no secret that physically attractive politicians tend to have an advantage come November. A large study from researchers at the University of Helsinki actually determined that "Evaluations of beauty explain success in real elections better than evaluations of competence, intelligence, likability, or trustworthiness." How can this be? Aren't we informed, enlightened voters? Not necessarily. When making decisions, humans tend to rely on simple, heuristic-based judgements. Most of the time, we don't even realize we're doing it. We might think that we're consciously considering all of the issues, but in reality, our vote might just come down to how pleasing the politician looks.
A more nuanced explanation comes courtesy of a new study by researchers at Arizona State University. Led by psychologist Andrew White, the team conducted a string of experiments, finding evidence that we value physically attractive leaders out of concern for disease threats. Their work is published in the journal Psychological Science.
In the first experiment, they found that voters in congressional districts faced with high levels of disease threat -- as indicated by higher levels of infant mortality and reduced human longevity -- tended to cast a higher percentage of votes for more attractive politicians. Politicians who were rated significantly more attractive than average actually received 1.7% more of the total votes cast and had their odds of winning boosted by a factor of 1.77!
Next, White's team primed groups of subjects by having them read three separate stories, described below:
The disease-threat story described a person volunteering at a geriatric ward who encountered a number of disgusting events—being sneezed on by a sickly person, seeing a person with an open wound, and finding a hair in his or her lunch. The self-protection story described a person, home alone during a stormy night, who realizes there is an intruder in his or her house. The control story described a person organizing his or her office.
In the first of these two experiments, 123 subjects read one of the stories then were asked to rate the importance of 17 different characteristics in political leaders. One of these traits was physical attractiveness. Subjects who read the disease-threat story valued physical attractiveness at significantly higher levels than subjects who read either of the other stories.
In the second experiment, 210 participants read one of the three stories then viewed 32 politicians and rated how likely they would be to vote for each one. Again, subjects primed with the disease story were more likely to vote for attractive politicians than subjects who read the other stories.
One particular aspect of the study's design may limit the findings. Subjects in the latter two experiments were recruited online via Amazon's Mechanical Turk and were more than two-thirds female. Precise control over the subjects was not attained, and gender-based differences could bias the results.
However, the findings do make intuitive sense. As White points out, physical attractiveness is a cue for wellness, and it's generally considered vital for our leaders to be in good health.
Source: Andrew Edward White, Douglas T. Kenrick, Steven L. Neuberg. "Beauty at the Ballot Box: Disease Threats Predict Preferences for Physically Attractive Leaders." Psychological Science October 11, 2013 0956797613493642
