New research is showing that when it comes to voting, at least part of your decision is made in the blink of an eye. As this ScienCentral video explains, it involves parts of your brain that make quick decisions about the people you meet or see, including candidates for election.
CANDIDATE COMPETENCE
Candidates are out there every day, shaking hands, giving speeches, meeting people and debating the issues. Positions on the issues are painstakingly laid out, and enormous sums of money are spent by candidates to get voters to select their names on Election Day. But, research now suggests that a factor in our decision making about people, including candidates for office, happens in just one-tenth of a second.
Alexander Todorov, assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University, has studied how people react to the faces of candidates. In a study published in the journal Science in 2005, he asked people to view similar side-by-side photos of candidates for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. They asked the volunteers to use the photos to judge who was more competent. Todorov says, "If you ask people what is the most important attribute for a politician, they say competence. And, in fact judgment of competence based on facial appearance predicts election outcomes." In that study, the volunteers' decisions on who was more competent matched up about 70% of the time with the outcome of the races.
Todorov argued that these decisions happened very quickly, but the 2005 research didn't measure that. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he explained how they repeated the study, giving the volunteers only a brief glimpse of the faces. In one experiment they saw the candidates' faces for only one-tenth of a second. A second series of experiments extended the glimpse to a quarter of a second while a third series gave them two seconds to view the candidates' photos. If the volunteers recognized someone, those results were excluded. The results showed that, on average, the volunteers correctly predicted 64 percent of the races.
Todorov is clear to explain that in many ways the results are not novel, pointing out that, "From research in experimental psychology we know that, in fact, people do make these judgments fairly rapidly and they do affect social outcomes." However, applying this to how we choose who governs us provides a fresh look at the research. He says, "When we usually think about the decision making of voters…you think of people deciding upon the basis of self-economic interest, based on their core values, based on their different policies."
Todorov is clear to explain that in many ways the results are not novel, pointing out that, "From research in experimental psychology we know that, in fact, people do make these judgments fairly rapidly and they do affect social outcomes." However, applying this to how we choose who governs us provides a fresh look at the research. He says, "When we usually think about the decision making of voters…you think of people deciding upon the basis of self-economic interest, based on their core values, based on their different policies."
Studies also show that there is an identifiable response in our brains when we see new faces. Todorov says, "Faces that are perceived as untrustworthy by a majority of people, they evoke a stronger response in the amygdala, which is the sub-cortical brain region essential for fear conditioning, consolidation of emotional memories and evaluation of incoming stimuli."
image: ABC News
Todorov emphasizes this is only an "interesting phenomenon," and agrees that there are many factors ranging from political parties to issues that play a large, if not total role in many voters' decisions. But, he believes this can be a factor because, "Presumably people who are undecided voters or people who don't have a heavy investment in the election process…those are the voters who can swing an election, … (and candidate's faces are) something that can affect their decisions."
This research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition the week of October 22-26, 2007 and was funded by the Department of Psychology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.
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