Download Why Attractive Candidates Win

Why Attractive Candidates Win
NOV. 1, 2013
By ANDREW EDWARD WHITE and DOUGLAS T. KENRICK
JOHN F. KENNEDY, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Kirsten Gillibrand: Americans have a long
history of electing good-looking leaders. Of course, not every successful candidate could be a
stand-in for George Clooney or Angelina Jolie. Indeed, sometimes a less attractive candidate
triumphs over a better-looking rival. So when and why do voters prefer more attractive
politicians?
Scientists had previously theorized that the general preference for attractive leaders was just
another example of a “halo effect.” In other words, we attribute all kinds of positive
characteristics to attractive people, and this tendency leads to more votes for politicians who look
like Hollywood stars.
But our work challenges this traditional view. As we argue in a new article in the journal
Psychological Science, people’s preferences for good-looking politicians may be linked to
ancient adaptations for avoiding disease. In fact, the preference for attractive politicians seems to
ebb and flow with voters’ concerns about germs.
How and why might disease be related to beauty at the ballot box?
Past research has found that some of the features associated with beauty — smooth skin, shiny
hair, body and facial symmetry — are actually indicators of health.
Building on these findings, we hypothesized that voters’ preferences for physically attractive
politicians might reflect a desire for leaders who are free from disease. Our ancestors frequently
confronted devastating epidemics that wiped out many of the members of their groups; at such
times, having a healthy leader might have been particularly important.
If this is right, then modern humans may have a vestigial tendency to prefer attractive leaders
when disease threats are looming. It follows that preferences for attractive leaders may rise and
fall with voters’ concerns about disease. That is, people especially worried about germs should
be especially likely to prefer physically attractive politicians.
To test this hypothesis, we first examined the links between health statistics and voting patterns
for winners and losers in the 2010 United States congressional elections. These analyses revealed
that in congressional districts with a higher incidence of disease, more physically attractive
candidates earned a significantly greater portion of the vote and were actually more likely to win
at the ballot box. In fact, good-looking candidates were almost twice as likely to win in these
districts.
By contrast, in districts where people were generally healthier, being the better-looking candidate
had no measurable effect on electoral outcomes.
To rule out alternative explanations for this phenomenon, we also conducted a series of
controlled experimental studies. In one study, participants were exposed either to images of
unhealthy people, violence or, as control, office supplies. People who had seen the images of
disease placed relatively more importance on a candidate’s physical attractiveness.
This finding suggests that the preference for good-looking leaders arises from a desire to avoid
disease threats specifically and is not a response to threats more generally (those exposed to the
violent images did not show the same pattern of results).
A third experiment replicated this finding using images of actual members of the British
Parliament, to control for any cultural or familiarity bias. When American subjects were asked
which of the members they would vote for, those who had been previously thinking about
disease were more likely to favor the better-looking Britons.
A final experiment extended these findings to leadership preferences in the workplace.
Participants were shown a series of photographs of people who varied in attractiveness and were
asked what role they would prefer each person to have in their office: Would you rather have this
person serve as your boss or as your co-worker?
People who said they were concerned with disease were more likely to desire that a more
attractive person take on the boss role, highlighting that the preference for attractive group
leaders goes above and beyond the more general preferences for attractive group members.
At first blush, you might not guess that typhoid fever, John F. Kennedy and Sarah Palin had any
connection with one another. But the link between disease and leader preferences aligns with
other new findings showing that disease concerns are connected in functional ways to a host of
human decisions, from prejudice to religiosity. This work is part of a larger program of research
exploring how human decision making reflects the influence of our evolutionary past, and
highlighting how little we understand our own, supposedly reasoned, decision making.
Andrew Edward White is a doctoral candidate in social psychology at Arizona State University.
Douglas T. Kenrick is a professor of psychology at Arizona State and a co-author of “The
Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think.”