Faces of politicians: Babyfacedness predicts inferred competence but not electoral success

Panu Poutvaara, Henrik Jordahl () and Niclas Berggren ()

No 139, Ratio Working Papers from The Ratio Institute

Abstract: Recent research has documented that competent-looking political candidates do better in U.S. elections and that babyfaced individuals are generally perceived to be less competent than maturefaced individuals. Taken together, this suggests that babyfaced political candidates are perceived as less competent and therefore fare worse in elections. We test this hypothesis, making use of photograph-based judgments by 2,772 respondents of the facial appearance of 1,785 Finnish political candidates. Our results confirm that babyfacedness is negatively related to inferred competence in politics. Despite this, babyfacedness is either unrelated or positively related to electoral success, depending on the sample of candidates.

Keywords: Babyfacedness; Competence; Beauty; Trustworthiness; Elections (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J45 J70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
Date: 2009-06-18
Note: Forthcoming in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
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Published in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2009, pages 1132-1135.

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Related works:
Working Paper: Faces of Politicians: Babyfacedness Predicts Inferred Competence but Not Electoral Success (2009)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0139

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