Visual Political Communication: The Impact of Facial Cues from Social Constituencies to Personal Pocketbooks

TLDR: For instance, the authors provided an overview of the research on the use of appearance-based cues in political decision-making including initial information gathered about candidates, the evaluation of candidates' potential to be effective leaders, and the decision of whether or not to support candidates in an election.

Abstract: Voters often use visual cues such as facial appearance when forming impressions of political candidates. Originally, psychological research on appearance-based politics focused on understanding whether or not these facial cues were consequential for political judgments. As this sub-field of study has expanded, the focus has shifted to understanding how and what facial cues voters utilize in their decision-making. From this perspective, inferences about political candidates are characterized by a number of interrelated appearance-based cues such as facial competence, physical attractiveness, and ingrained gender stereotypes that manifest in politicians’ appearance. Importantly, this expanded research focus now includes a broader range of evaluative judgments that are inf luenced by candidates’ facial appearance. Here, we provide an overview of the research on the use of appearance-based cues in political decision-making including initial information gathered about candidates, the evaluation of candidates’ potential to be effective leaders, and the decision of whether or not to support candidates in an election. In 1960, the first televised presidential debate demonstrated the power of visual cues to sway political judgments. Listeners of the radio broadcast of the debate thought that Richard Nixon won the debate as he spoke more confidently and persuasively about the issues. However, viewers of the televised debate believed that John F. Kennedy appeared more confident and presidential. Much of the post-debate rhetoric focused as much on style as it did on substance. The consensus was that Kennedy won, not because he debated better but because he looked better (Druckman, 2003). While the notion that appearance can overwhelm politician perception may have been surprising in 1960, such impacts are now widely recognized. In today’s era of news consumption, voters are increasingly inundated with images of political candidates. Voters see visuals of candidates from televised advertising, news coverage, social media, and candidate websites (Dimitrova & Bystrom, 2013; Druckman, Kifer, & Parkin, 2009; Grabe & Bucy, 2009; Hoegg & Lewis, 2011; Prior, 2014; Sapiro, Walsh, Strach, & Hennings, 2011). The increasing amount of campaign spending dedicated to televised advertising and developing a campaign’s online presence suggests that candidates understand the importance of controlling their visual image (Druckman et al., 2009; Sapiro et al., 2011). Indeed, such efforts are not without consequence. Including candidates’ images on ballots impacts voter turnout and electoral outcomes (Banducci, Karp, Thrasher, & Rallings, 2008; Buckley, Collins, & Reidy, 2007; Johns & Shephard, 2011). Candidate visuals can trigger emotions and convey personality characteristics that in turn inf luence how favorably we evaluate candidates (Marcus, 1988). Despite the dominance of visuals in campaign communication, the empirical study of the consequences of candidates’ visual appearance has only recently gained prominence in the scientific literature. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Visual Political Communication A growing body of research suggests that in addition to traditional factors (i.e., political party, ideology, incumbency; Conover & Feldman, 1989; Feldman & Conover, 1983), candidate appearance serves as a heuristic or cognitive shortcut by which voters form impressions of candidates (Lau & Redlawsk, 2011; Olivola & Todorov, 2010a). Voters may not be highly informed about the political process or may be unfamiliar with candidates running for political office. Nevertheless, they are able to make social judgments about candidates based on superficial cues such as their physical appearance with remarkable cognitive efficiency. For example, perceptions of facial competence, physical attractiveness, and facial gender typicality (i.e., masculinity/femininity) provide heuristic information that voters utilize when forming judgments about candidates, evaluating candidates, and deciding which candidate to support in an election. Previous reviews of the literature on appearance-based social inferences and electoral success have shown that evaluations of candidates’ personality characteristics accurately predicted their electoral success. Facial competence, in particular, is a robust predictor of election outcomes (Hall, Goren, Chaiken, & Todorov, 2009; Olivola & Todorov, 2010a). Psychologists, political scientists, and mass communication scholars have asked how and when observers use visual cues to evaluate politicians along multiple dimensions. Here, we describe some of the exciting insights from appearance-based politics research for candidate impression formation and candidates’ electoral success. We summarize research findings that characterize appearance-based politics as consequential when individuals are gathering information about candidates, evaluating the potential of candidates to be effective leaders, and deciding whom to vote for in an electoral contest. We end by highlighting important new steps in this nascent field. Political Party Affiliation at Face Value From a mere glimpse of a politician’s photograph, perceivers can discern their political party affiliation and ideology (Bull & Hawkes, 1982; Carpinella & Johnson, 2013a; Herrmann & Shikano, 2015; Jahoda, 1954; Kawar, 1984; Olivola, Sussman, Tsetsos, Kang, & Todorov, 2012; Olivola & Todorov, 2010b; Roberts, Griffin, McOwan, & Johnston, 2011; Rule & Ambady, 2010a; Samochowiec, Wanke, & Fiedler, 2010). Participants in these studies viewed the faces of unfamiliar elected politicians, unfamiliar non-politicians, or political candidates and judged them to be either Democrat/liberal/left-wing or Republican/conservative/right-wing. Across many trials, participants were above chance levels at determining the political allegiances of those depicted. Therefore, a politician’s facial appearance compels meaningful information for social judgments. Initially, the means by which these judgments achieve accuracy was understudied (Olivola & Todorov, 2010b; Wänke & Landwehr, 2012); however, the visual cues that inform these social judgments are increasingly well documented. One of the visual cues that perceivers use to infer unfamiliar politicians’ political party affiliation is candidate attractiveness. Jahoda (1954) and Bull and Hawkes (1982) investigated the relationship between facial attractiveness and inferences about the political party affiliation of British Members of Parliament. Jahoda (1954) found that perceivers tended to think that better-looking candidates were from their own party, but Bull and Hawkes (1982) found that regardless of perceivers’ political leanings, they consistently believed that more attractive candidates were more ideologically conservative. Berggren, Jordahl, and Poutvaara (2015) also found that conservative politicians were consistently rated as more attractive. However, recent research by Hermann and Shikano (2015) found that perceivers tended to over ascribe their own ideological viewpoints to better-looking candidates, thereby supporting the original findings by Jahoda (1954). Attractiveness is one appearance-based cue that perceivers use to infer the political party affiliation of unfamiliar politicians; however, more research is warranted to further disentangle these findings. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Social and Personality Psychology Compass (2016): 1–17, 10.1111/spc3.12249 Visual Political Communication In addition to the utilization of candidates’ attractiveness, candidates’ gender inf luences perceivers’ judgments of candidates’ political party affiliation. When asked to provide a judgment of which of the two rival candidates in U.S. political elections was the Democrat (versus Republican), study participants relied on candidates’ gender as a heuristic for their political party affiliation (Olivola et al., 2012). More specifically, when perceivers were shown images of two rival candidates in a mixed-gender election (one female candidate and one male candidate), they were more likely to render a Democrat judgment for the female candidate. Given that in the U.S. female politicians are significantly more likely to identify as Democrats, it comes as no surprise that gender is used as a heuristic for inferring candidates’ party affiliation, especially for female candidates. Another visual cue that perceivers use to infer politicians’ political party is facial gendertypicality (i.e., masculinity/femininity). Research from our lab sought to further explore which visual cues compelled accuracy in judgments of political party affiliation. Our investigation stemmed from observations that the two major U.S. political parties extol dramatically different ideals about gender roles (Lye & Waldron, 1997). Specifically, Republicans endorse traditional gender roles and advocate for femininity among women, Democrats advocate for more progressive gender roles with less gender rigidity. We tested whether party judgments were driven by the gendered appearance of politicians. Using a sample of national-level politicians, we presented participants with photographs of unfamiliar politicians and asked them to categorize their political party (i.e., Democrat or Republican). Among female politicians, those who appeared more feminine were more likely to be accurately categorized as Republicans; those who appeared less feminine were more likely to be accurately categorized as Democrats (Carpinella & Johnson, 2013a). Thus, the facial gender-typicality of female politicians compelled accuracy in party affiliation judgments with facial femininity relating to political conservatism. In addition to these general observations, perceiver ideology moderates the effect of appearance-based characteristics on judgments of politicians’ ideology. For instance, perceivers used more liberal criteria when rendering ideology judgments for out-group than for in-group members (Samochowiec et al., 2