We show that inferences of competence based solely on facial appearance predicted the outcomes of U.S. congressional elections better than chance (e.g., 68.8% of the Senate races in 2004) and also were linearly related to the margin of victory. These inferences were specific to competence and occurred within a 1-second exposure to the faces of the candidates. The findings suggest that rapid, unreflective trait inferences can contribute to voting choices, which are widely assumed to be based primarily on rational and deliberative considerations.

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This chapter examines the impact of rapid automatic processes in political decision making. Specifically, using a dual-process framework, it argues that individuals assess candidate competence on the basis of facial appearance, and that this can predict the outcomes of both U.S. congressional and gubernatorial elections. These judgments occur quickly, and are largely independent of controlled processes. These findings illustrate the complexity of electoral decision making in complicated information environments, and suggest that even though individuals may not realize it, they often have little control over their initial impressions. The chapter concludes by examining how these findings inform our understanding of electoral politics, political persuasion, and democratic citizenship more generally.

Traits spontaneously inferred from behaviors bind to actors' faces (spontaneous trait inferences, or sTI), and can inappropriately bind to faces of persons deemed irrelevant to the behaviors (spontaneous trait transference, or sTT). Experiments 1 and 2 showed that sTT effects, while weaker than sTI, nevertheless occurred in the face of clear irrelevance instructions. Experiment 3 showed that sTT-but not sTI-can be eliminated when faces and behaviors are separated perceptually. Experiments 4, 5, and 6 found no sTT when a relevant and an irrelevant actor were presented simultaneously, suggesting that inferred traits bind exclusively to faces of relevant targets when these targets are present and bind to irrelevant targets only when relevant targets are absent and irrelevant targets are present. The experiments rule out an attentional account of this phenomenon, demonstrating sTT elimination when attention to concomitant face-behavior pairs was ensured. The findings suggest a spontaneous attributional process. Imagine that you run into Jill, and during the course of conversation, she mentions that a friend of hers, Jackie, never gives tips at restaurants. Perhaps surprisingly, you now get a sense that Jill is stingy, having inferred this from her description of Jackie and having misattributed it to Jill instead. This is precisely what studies on spontaneous trait transference (STT) show (Carlston, Skowronski, & Sparks, 1995; Skowronski, Carlston, Mae, & Crawford, 1998). Traits spontaneously inferred from behaviors can become associated with the wrong face. Although this association is inappropriate, if people have the goal of forming impressions, they would use Jill's description of Jackie to form an evaluative impression of Jill (Wyer, Budesheim, Lambert, & Swan, 1994). What happens when the face is clearly irrelevant to the person description? That is, what happens if Jill does not know Jackie and just happened to be around when Jackie was described as stingy? We wish to thank Manish Pakrashi and Valerie Loehr for helping with data collection.