What monkeys can teach us about evaluating presidential candidates

Does a candidate’s appearance affect how we vote? There is mounting evidence that the answer may be yes.

In one recent study published in the preprint server bioRxiv (and still peer-reviewed), neuroscientists from the University of Pennsylvania and the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Portugal had monkeys look at photos of political candidates from previous American races. The monkeys tended not to look at candidates with male facial features wide jaws and less prominent cheekbones, with the focus instead on contenders who lost their elections.

This study supports previous research suggesting that people have some sort of shared assumption about what makes a face look dominant or competent Christopher Olivolaa psychologist and associate professor of marketing at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study. He added that candidates who look a certain way tend to garner more votes, although looks do not guarantee victory.

The findings come after a recent poll of more than 10,000 Americans found that more than a third believed physical appearance was “somewhat important” to both male And female candidates.

Research dates back to the late 1970s found that first impressions were significantly correlated with how well a candidate did. More than twenty years later, research shows psychologist Alexander Todorov came to similar conclusions: perception of a candidate’s physical appearance predicted their success. In a 2007 studyTodorov found that about 70% of congressional candidates who seemed more trustworthy, based solely on looks on their faces, won the election.

“We never told our subjects that they were looking at candidates for political office – we just asked them to give a gut reaction about which unknown face seemed more competent,” Todorov said. in 2007. “The findings suggest that quick, unreflective judgments based on a candidate’s face can influence voting decisions.”

Even children show similar predictive ability, at least according to a Paper from 2009 exploring the phenomenon among preschoolers in Switzerland.

This research was intriguing Michael Platta neuroscientist and director of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the latest study.

“It starts to beg the question: What’s going on? Do we really form a judgment about the policies of these candidates or their platforms or parties? I mean, yeah, those things matter,” Platt said. “But if children can do it, we thought: they rely on a signal in the face that influences their behavior. We thought, ‘I bet monkeys do it too.’”

Flat and Yaoguang Jiangthe first author of the study and a neuroscientist in Platt’s laboratory at the university, devised an experiment in which they had three male rhesus monkeys photos of 124 gubernatorial races from 1996 to 2006, 149 senatorial races from 2000 to 2008, and all presidential (and vice-presidential) races between 2000 and 2020. The images, taken from online sources and shown in grayscale, include both male and female candidates .

As they looked at paired photos of opposing candidates, a computer tracked the gaze of the monkeys, who tended to fixate on the losing candidate for longer.

In the senatorial and gubernatorial races, the monkeys were about 54.6% accurate in picking the loser. When both candidates were male, their accuracy was about the same, at 54.4%. While these percentages don’t seem like much, the researchers say they are more than what would be expected if left to chance.

The results were a toss-up for the presidential election: the monkeys were only about 50% accurate in choosing the loser. Age and gender were likely more complicating factors in the smaller sample size.

“Monkeys definitely prefer looking at females over males,” Jiang said. “Monkeys do not view older candidates as dominant, so they are not intimidating.”

Platt said facial features such as the width of the jaw relative to the cheekbone serve as social cues for masculinity. In his team’s research, the winning candidate’s jaw was on average 2% more prominent than that of the losing candidate.

The researchers say their findings point to a potential evolutionary basis for why we consider someone powerful or capable based on appearance alone.

“Our laboratory, like many other laboratories, has been involved in tracing the neural circuits that support our social lives. I don’t want to say it’s identical, but (this circuit) is pretty much the same in monkeys and humans. … It is an adaptation to living in complex social environments where you have to find a balance between cooperation and competition,” Platt said.

Olivola, of Carnegie Mellon University, is skeptical about whether evolution is the underlying cause.

“Unfortunately, our ancestors did not choose leaders. They did not choose, but submitted,” Olivola said. “The most popular man won. He could have been the man with the biggest stick or the biggest sword. … The idea that we evolved for something that didn’t even happen at the time doesn’t make sense on its face.”

Furthermore, the ability to predict who will win based on appearance alone is not necessarily an accurate predictor of whether that candidate will be an effective political leader, Olivola said.

“Just because someone won an election doesn’t mean he/she is the better candidate. There are plenty of reasons why people win elections that have nothing to do with (their appearance).”

Related:Study: Americans think party fights get too much attention. Is there a solution?

Other studies find physical appearance matters less to politically informed voters And voters with less visual exposure to the candidates.

Appearances can serve as something of a red herring. A Study from 2018 van Olivola and Todorov found that Republicans were more likely to vote for a candidate with a conservative-looking face, even if that candidate was a Democrat. The same study found that Democrats and liberals may be less influenced by facial stereotyping.

So what are the monkeys predicting for the 2024 US elections?

There is no clear winner among the presidential candidates. The primates were split between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, but appeared to lean more toward vice presidential candidate Tim Walz than Sen. J.D. Vance.

Miriam Fauzia is a science journalist at The Dallas Morning News. Her fellowship is supported by the University of Texas at Dallas. Het Nieuws makes all editorial decisions.