Transformed Facial Similarity as a Political Cue: A Preliminary Investigation

Abstract

Experimental subjects evaluated a candidate for local office whose face was digitally altered to absorb the subjects' facial structure. For half of the subjects, the photograph of the candidate was morphed such that the image presented was a blend composed of 60% of the unfamiliar Caucasian male and 40% of the subject. For the other half the photograph was unaltered. Given previous research on implicit familiarity (Zajonc, 1968(Zajonc, , 1980, we predicted that the morph would advantage the candidate. The results demonstrated no main effect of the similarity manipulation.However, there was a robust similarity by gender interaction. Male subjects evaluated the morphed candidate more favorably than the unaltered photograph, while female subjects rated him more negatively. We discuss potential explanations for this interaction effect, and explore the possible implications of facial similarity as a political cue in both high-and low-information elections. Facial Similarity as a Political Cue 3 TRANSFORMED FACIAL SIMILARITY AS A POLITICAL CUE:A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION Does a candidate's appearance matter to voters? Although visual imagery is an essential element of media-based campaigns, with the exception of a few scattered studies on candidates' attractiveness (e.g. Efran & Patterson, 1974;Redlawsk & Lau, 2003;Rosenberg & McCafferty, 1987), political scientists have tended to discount the significance of nonverbal cues. In fact, political communication researchers generally take for granted that candidates' visual attributes are secondary to message-based considerations including their policy positions, character traits (such as competence and integrity), performance credentials, and, most notably, partisan affiliation. This explicitly cognitive or substantive calculus is thought to be so dominant that even in campaigns where candidates' non-verbal and physical attributes, most notably their race and gender, do influence vote preference, researchers attribute the connection to voters' tendency to infer particular policy positions from these attributes. Gender, for instance, is taken as a liberal "signal" because most voters believe that women are generally more liberal and inclined to oppose "male" positions such as increased military spending or harsh remedies for crime (McDermott, 1988;Iyengar et al., 1997). Similarly, increased support for African-American candidates among African-American voters is considered symptomatic of group solidarity or policy agreement (Bobo & Gilliam, 1990). In effect, a candidate's race or gender is thought to trigger gender or race-based stereotypes, which include links about the candidate's preferences on the issues. Facial Similarity as a Political Cue 4It is true that race and gender are both transparent visual cues. Yet, as the work described above suggests, they do not represent purely individual-level attributes. To be seen as a woman or African-American directs attention both to group and individual attributes. Group interests, of course, are closely embedded in Amer...

Facial Similarity between Voters and Candidates Causes Influence

“…In previous research, we have demonstrated that similarity in mediated nonverbal behavior causes high amounts of social influence. Specifically, when one uses digital media to automatically copy head movements (Bailenson and Yee 2005) or handshake styles (Bailenson and Yee 2006), they become more persuasive. Future work should extend these findings to political discourse.…”

“…In our original pilot study, we included a condition in which voters evaluated unaltered images of candidates with no morph at all (Bailenson et al 2006), and demonstrated an advantage for candidates morphed with the self over that unmorphed control condition. The problem with that condition as a control is that the mere act of morphing causes an increase in symmetry and decreases blemishes in faces, two mechanisms known to increase attractiveness.…”

“…We developed the experimental design for manipulating candidate-voter facial similarity in a pilot study (Bailenson et al 2006) using undergraduate students as the voters and a hypothetical male as the target candidate. In that study, for half of the participants, the photograph of the candidate was morphed with a photograph of the participant.…”

The Use of Immersive Virtual Reality in the Learning Sciences: Digital Transformations of Teachers, Students, and Social Context

“…In previous work we examined the ability of people to detect TSI in digital interactions, ranging from the exchange of simple digital photographs (Bailenson, Garland, Iyengar, & Yee, 2006) to more elaborate CVE contexts (see Bailenson, 2006, for a review). Over dozens of studies, a similar result occurred: People are very poor at detecting transformations of appearance and behaviors during the exchange of digital information.…”

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“…The impact of this facial-similarity manipulation has been tested in a series of studies in voting behavior (Bailenson, Garland , Iyengar, and Yee 2006;Bailenson, Iyengar, Yee, and Collins 2008). In both sets of studies, participants were asked to rate political candidates who either had or had not been morphed with their own photographs.…”