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February 18, 2008, 07:09 AM ET
Stanford Researcher: Voters Prefer Candidates Who Look Like Them
Presidential candidates have put in months of frenetic campaigning, as they traverse the country trying to persuade voters that their characters, leadership abilities, and polices on issues like health care, the economy, and the war in Iraq, are superior to their opponents’.
But according to Jeremy N. Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, their hard work may be for naught. Mr. Bailenson and his students conducted some experiments using virtual reality and concluded that voters who don’t feel a strong connection to either political party are more likely to vote for the politician whose face resembles their own.
In 2004, one week before the presidential election, Mr. Bailenson and his students questioned a random sample of people about their views on President Bush and his then Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, while viewing photographs of the candidates. One third of the people viewed a photograph of President Bush whose face was inconspicuously altered to mirror their own appearance. Another third viewed Senator Kerry’s face, morphed into their own. A control group saw unaltered photographs of the two men.
The researchers found that people’s preference for a candidate who facial profile mirrors their own is strong enough to affect the outcome of an election.
Mr. Balienson presented his findings Sunday at a virtual-reality conference, Metaverse U, at Stanford University. —Andrea L. Foster
Categories: Research
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