Face value—Study shows that low-information voters are most likely to be swayed by…appearances. [View All]

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/face-value-voting-0718.html

Face value

Study shows that low-information voters are most likely to be swayed by candidates’ appearances.

Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office

July 18, 2011

The looks of political candidates are a key factor influencing voters, a phenomenon identified by a number of scholars in recent years. Now, a new study by MIT political scientists adds to this body of research by detailing which types of citizens are most influenced by candidate appearances, and why: The tendency is most prevalent among low-information voters who watch a lot of television.

Using data from the 2006 U.S. Senate and governors’ races, the study shows that for every 10-point increase in the advantage a candidate has when rated by voters on his or her looks, there will be a nearly 5 percent increase in the vote for that candidate by the uninformed voters who are most firmly planted on their couches. Yet that same advantage in looks is worth only about a 1 percent increase among low-information voters who watch little television.

“It’s not that this effect influences all voters exactly the same way,” says Chappell Lawson, an associate professor of political science at MIT and a co-author of the study. “Voters who watch a lot of television but don’t really know much about the candidates, besides how they look, are particularly susceptible.”

Lawson and Gabriel Lenz, also an associate professor of political science at MIT, detail the results http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00511.x/pdf">in a new paper, “Looking the Part: Television Leads Less Informed Citizens to Vote Based on Candidates’ Appearance,” published this month in the American Journal of Political Science.

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