Caltech-led researchers find negative cues from appearance alone matter for real...(ncreased activation in response to the a...)
ncreased activation in response to the appearance of election losers is consistent with its association with negative emotional evaluations in several domains, including the sight of someone who looks disgusted or untrustworthy," Spezio says.
"Candidates try to evoke emotional reactions when they campaign for office, and this research gives us a new perspective on how much emotions might matter, and how they might matter, in terms of how voters view candidates," says study coauthor R. Michael Alvarez, a professor of political science at Caltech and codirector of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project.
One surprise in the study is that negative evaluations, such as the perception that a candidate is threatening, influence election loss significantly more than positive evaluations like attractiveness influence election success.
"While these findings are certainly very provocative, it is important to note their limitations," says study senior author Ralph Adolphs, Bren Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and professor of biology at Caltech, and director of the Caltech Brain Imaging Center.
In particular, Adolphs says, the observed effects, while statistically significant, were rather small. "There is no doubt that many, many sources of information come into play when we make important and complex decisions, such as will happen in the upcoming elections. We are not claiming that how the candidates look is all there is to the story of how voters make up their minds--or that this is even the biggest part of the story. However, we do think it has some effect--and, moreover, that this effect may be largest when voters know little else about a candidate."
Adds Spezio, "Given the size of the effects we see, we are likely detecting the influence of voters who have little or no information about a candidate's views or life story, for example, or who choose not to pay attention to that information. Our finding is consistent w
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| Contact: Lori Oliwenstein lorio@caltech.edu 626-395-3631 California Institute of Technology Source:Eurekalert |
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