Right-Wing Politicians Prefer the Emotional Left

Abstract

Physiological research suggests that social attitudes, such as political beliefs, may be partly hard-wired in the brain. Conservatives have heightened sensitivity for detecting emotional faces and use emotion more effectively when campaigning. As the left face displays emotion more prominently, we examined 1538 official photographs of conservative and liberal politicians from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States for an asymmetry in posing. Across nations, conservatives were more likely than liberals to display the left cheek. In contrast, liberals were more likely to face forward than were conservatives. Emotion is important in political campaigning and as portraits influence voting decisions, conservative politicians may intuitively display the left face to convey emotion to voters.

Left wings to the left: Posing and perceived political orientation

“…These results are in apparent contradiction to a previous study on posing bias and political orientation, which found that conservative political candidates were more likely to be portrayed with a more emotional leftward posing bias than their liberal counterparts (Thomas et al, 2012), until one considers several important differences between these two studies. Firstly, this previous study examined the way individuals posed, whereas we investigated perceptions of political stance based on pose direction.…”

“…These researchers found that conservative politicians were more likely to be portrayed with a leftward posing bias than their liberal counterparts. This was hypothesized to be due to conservatives more effectively using emotion in their campaigns, and due to the previous finding that conservative individuals have heightened emotional sensitivity (Thomas et al, 2012). It is important to note that our study differs from this one, as this previous study examined the way individuals posed, whereas we seek to investigate the perceptions of these poses.…”

“…A previous study investigated posing bias in relation to politics (Thomas, Loetscher, Clode, Nicholls, & Sirigu, 2012). In this study, images of politicians were collected and analysed for posing bias.…”

Did Buddha turn the other cheek too? A comparison of posing biases between Jesus and Buddha

“…There are also sex differences in posing biases, with females more likely to pose to the left than males (Churches et al, 2014;Thomas, Burkitt, Patrick, & Elias, 2008). Previous researchers have hypothesized that differences in the intensity of emotionality to be portrayed in an image influences the pose of the individual (Acosta et al, 2013;Burkitt et al, 2006;Churches et al, 2014;Thomas, Loetscher, Clode, & Nicholls, 2012).…”

“…For example, pictures of university professors from their institution's website show that English and Psychology academics display the left side of their face with more frequency compared to Engineering academics (Churches et al, 2012). Likewise, conservative politicians, who are more likely to use emotional campaign strategies, display the left side of their face more frequently than liberal politicians, who typically exhibit a central face presentation (Thomas et al, 2012).…”