Arbeitspapier
Faces of Politicians: Babyfacedness Predicts Inferred Competence but Not Electoral Success
Recent research has documented that competent-looking political candidates do better in U.S. elections and that babyfaced individuals are generally perceived to be less competent than maturefaced individuals. Taken together, this suggests that babyfaced political candidates are perceived as less competent and therefore fare worse in elections. We test this hypothesis, making use of photograph-based judgments by 2,772 respondents of the facial appearance of 1,785 Finnish political candidates. Our results confirm that babyfacedness is negatively related to inferred competence in politics. Despite this, babyfacedness is either unrelated or positively related to electoral success, depending on the sample of candidates.
- Language
-
Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
-
Series: IFN Working Paper ; No. 803
- Classification
-
Wirtschaft
Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Public Sector Labor Markets
Labor Discrimination: General
- Subject
-
Babyfacedness
Competence
Beauty
Trustworthiness
Elections
Politiker
Qualifikation
Vertrauen
Wahlverhalten
Finnland
- Event
-
Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
-
Poutvaara, Panu
Jordahl, Henrik
Berggren, Niclas
- Event
-
Veröffentlichung
- (who)
-
Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
- (where)
-
Stockholm
- (when)
-
2009
- Handle
- Last update
-
10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET
Data provider
This object is provided by:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Poutvaara, Panu
- Jordahl, Henrik
- Berggren, Niclas
- Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
Time of origin
- 2009
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