Candidate Vulnerability and Exposure to Counterattitudinal Information: Evidence From Two U.S. Presidential Elections

Politically motivated selective exposure has traditionally been understood through the lens of long‐standing attitudes and beliefs, but the role of environment in shaping information exposure practices merits further consideration. Citizens might respond to the political environment in their information‐seeking behavior for numerous reasons. Citizens who believe their position is politically vulnerable have specific cognitive and affective needs that may make them uniquely attuned to counterattitudinal information. In the context of a presidential election, this means that as the defeat of a supported candidate appears more likely, attention to counterattitudinal content will increase. Data collected in the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Presidential elections support this prediction, although this relationship was observed primarily among supporters of the Republican candidate in both elections.     

Predicting Election Outcomes from Positive and Negative Trait Assessments of Candidate Images

Conventional wisdom, and a growing body of behavioral research, suggests that the nonverbal image of a candidate influences voter decision making. We presented subjects with images of political candidates and asked them to make four trait judgments based solely on viewing the photographs. Subjects were asked which of the two faces exhibited more competence, attractiveness, deceitfulness, and threat, which are arguably four of the most salient attributes that can be conveyed by faces. When we compared our subjects' choices to the actual election outcomes, we found that the candidates chosen as more likely to physically threaten the subjects actually lost 65% of the real elections. As expected, our findings support the conclusions of Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, and Hall (2005 ) by showing a positive correlation between the competence judgments and the real election outcomes. Surprisingly, attractiveness was correlated with losing elections, with the effect being driven by faces of candidates who looked politically incompetent yet personally attractive. Our findings have implications for future research on negative political communication, as they suggest that both threatening first impressions and fleeting impressions of attractiveness can harm a candidate's electoral chances.     

Perelman’s Audience Revisted: Towards the Construction of a New Type of Audience

This article asks whether Perelman’s concepts of the audience can help us achieve a better understanding of the Internet Audience in the specific context of the recent French and American presidential elections. It concludes that Perelman’s notion of “argumentation before a single hearer” is most useful for that purpose. Applying it to Internet audience allows us to discern some of the communicative devices, such as appeal to participation and appeal to proximity, used by candidates in order to achieve a higher degree of involvement on the part of the surfers and potential voters, which in turn is translated to action by the surfers/voters on behalf of the candidate. The application of Perelman’s concept shows that on the Web the interaction between the candidate and the surfer shifts from an argumentative situation per se to a context in which what appears to be a dialogue or conversation invites connivance between rhetor and audience.

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

Recent research has documented that competent-looking political candidates do better in US 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 2772 respondents of the facial appearance of 1785 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.     

Deus Ex Machina: The Influence of Polling Place on Voting Behavior

Voting is perceived as free and rational. Citizens make whatever choices they wish, shielded from external influences by the privacy of the voting booth. The current paper, however, suggests that a subtle source of influence—polling places themselves—can impact voting behavior. In two elections, people voting in churches were more likely to support a conservative candidate and a ban on same‐sex marriage, but not the restriction of eminent domain. A field experiment found that people completing questionnaires in a chapel awarded less money (relative to people in a secular building) to insurance claimants seeking compensation for abortion pills, but not to worker's compensation claimants. A laboratory experiment found that people subliminally exposed to ecclesiastical images awarded less money (relative to people exposed to control images) to abortion pill claimants, but not to worker's compensation claimants. Exposure to ecclesiastical images affected only Christians; non‐Christians' awards were unaffected by the prime. These findings show that polling locations can exert a powerful and precise influence on political attitudes and decision making.     

Sexism Versus Partisanship: A New Look at the Question of Whether America is Ready for a Woman President

We question the validity of traditional polling about the likelihood of respondents to vote for a woman president and argue that the use of such polls may overestimate sexism and underestimate the role that party identification and individual characteristics play in deciding about whether to vote for a woman president. Our analysis of data collected in May–June 2004 show that many people who say they will not vote for a woman for president would do so if given realistic, specific, political scenarios via head-to-head match-ups with potential candidates. Although survey respondents preferred George W. Bush to Hillary Clinton, the margin between these candidates was close especially considering that Bush had been actively campaigning for months, whereas Clinton had not.     

The perception of attractiveness and trustworthiness in male faces affects hypothetical voting decisions differently in wartime and peacetime scenarios

Facial appearance of candidates has been linked to real election outcomes. Here we extend these findings by examining the contributions of attractiveness and trustworthiness in male faces to perceived votability. We first use real faces to show that attractiveness and trustworthiness are positively and independently related to perceptions of good leadership (rating study). We then show that computer graphic manipulations of attractiveness and trustworthiness influence choice of leader (Experiments 1 and 2). Finally, we show that changing context from wartime to peacetime can affect which face receives the most votes. Attractive faces were relatively more valued for wartime and trustworthy faces relatively more valued for peacetime (Experiments 1 and 2). This pattern suggests that attractiveness, which may indicate health and fitness, is perceived to be a useful attribute in wartime leaders, whereas trustworthiness, which may indicate prosocial traits, is perceived to be more important during peacetime. Our studies highlight the possible role of facial appearance in voting behaviour and the role of attributions of attractiveness and trust. We also show that there may be no general characteristics of faces that make them perceived as the best choice of leader; leaders may be chosen because of characteristics that are perceived as the best for leaders to possess in particular situations.     

Poor working memory predicts false memories

Two studies investigated whether individual differences in simple span verbal working memory and complex working memory capacity are related to memory accuracy and susceptibility to false memory development. In Study 1, undergraduate students (N=60) were given two simple span working memory tests: forward and backward digit span. They also underwent a memory task that is known to elicit false memories of nonpresented words, the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Poor simple span working memory (as reflected by suboptimal backward digit span scores) was related to elevated levels of false recognition. Study 2 (N=65) replicated this finding, in that suboptimal backward digit span performance was found to be predictive of false recognition. However, complex working memory capacity (operation span) was not related to false recognition. This pattern suggests that even in a homogenous sample of undergraduates, poor working memory is associated with the susceptibility to recollect words never presented.     

Divergence over conformity: Change in immigration attitudes after the electoral success of an anti‐immigration populist party in the Finnish 2015 parliamentary elections

The populist, anti‐immigration‐oriented Finns Party was considered the winner of the Finnish 2015 parliamentary elections. In a representative sample of young adults (N = 606), a longitudinal pre‐ post‐election design revealed that attitudes towards immigration became more favourable among those disappointed by the outcome and those who did not vote for the Finns Party. Among the latter, both supporting the green‐red rival parties and disliking the Finns Party independently predicted increased support for migration. Other attitudes did not change. The results highlight the importance of social processes and identity concerns, particularly self‐categorization, as drivers of attitude change. While previous work has focused on conformity dynamics, our results suggest that diverging from an unwanted identity may be associated with attitude change.