December 4, 2019
Yoshikuni Ono (Tohoku University, Japan)
Yoshikuni Ono (Tohoku University) and Masahiko Asano (Takushoku University): A number of studies have shown that people are able to predict the electoral success of candidates from their faces. Thse results imply that a candidate’s facial appearance affects how voters evaluate the candidate. While existing studies point out the effect of candidate appearance is more pronounced among less knowledgeable voters, little attention has been paid to variations across candidates We argue that face cues become less important when voters evaluate candidates who have access to government resources or candidates who have proven past performance in the parliment. To test the validity of our argument, we asked more than 1,400 American voters to predict the electoral success of 494 Japanese candidates running for the Upper House elections in 2013 and 2016 exclusively from their faces. Our results show that American voters accurately forecast the electoral success (or loss) of Japanese candidates with much higher probability that the chance of a coin flip. Interestingly, however, not all candidates are equally likely to be predicted their electoral outcomes from their faces. Consistent with our argument, we found that candidates who are running from a government party and those who have been elected many times are immune to facial influence.