Research shows voters shy away from baby-faced politicians

WASHINGTON - A baby face may win hearts but it doesn't win votes, say United States researchers.

Students picked the winning US congressional candidate nearly 70 per cent of the time merely by glancing at their photos and deciding which one looked more competent, they said.

"This remarkable effect ... likely reflects differences in 'babyfacedness'," Leslie Zebrowitz of Brandeis University and Joann Montepare of Emerson College, both in Massachusetts, wrote in a commentary.

For their study, Alexander Todorov and colleagues at Princeton University showed pairs of photographs of real candidates for Congress, winners and losers, to more than 800 students.

The students were asked to choose the candidate they thought had won or would win, and were asked why. On average, the volunteers looked at each pair of photos for one second.

The students chose correctly 68.8 per cent of the time, Todorov and colleagues report in this week's issue of the journal Science.

"In one of our studies, 143 participants were asked to rate the importance of 13 different traits in considering a person for public office. These traits included competence, trustworthiness, likeability, and 10 additional traits," the researchers said.

"Competence was rated as the most important trait." The students correctly chose the winner based on how competent he or she looked in 71.6 per cent of the Senate races and in 66.8 per cent of the House of Representatives races.

Zebrowitz, who wrote a book, Reading Faces: Window to the Soul?, and Montepare said it boiled down to having a baby face. "A more baby-faced individual is perceived as less competent than a more mature-faced, but equally attractive, peer of the same age and sex."

Zebrowitz said different cultures generally agreed on what gave a person a baby face - a round face, large eyes, small nose, high forehead and small chin. "The data we have suggest that we're not necessarily electing better leaders - people who are actually more competent - though we are electing people who look the part."

Todorov agreed. "Our findings have challenging implications for the rationality of voting preferences, adding to other findings that consequential decisions can be more 'shallow' than we would like to believe."

Todorov's team said they took into account possible other factors in their study, and ruled them out.

"We also ruled out the possibility that the age, attractiveness, and/or familiarity with the faces of the candidates" was a factor.

Baby-face pointers

Round face
Large eyes
Small nose
High forehead
Small chin

- REUTERS