Skip to main content

Elected in 100 milliseconds: Appearance-Based Trait Inferences and Voting

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior volume 34, pages 83–110 (2010)Cite this article

Abstract

Recent research has shown that rapid judgments about the personality traits of political candidates, based solely on their appearance, can predict their electoral success. This suggests that voters rely heavily on appearances when choosing which candidate to elect. Here we review this literature and examine the determinants of the relationship between appearance-based trait inferences and voting. We also reanalyze previous data to show that facial competence is a highly robust and specific predictor of political preferences. Finally, we introduce a computer model of face-based competence judgments, which we use to derive some of the facial features associated with these judgments.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price includes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Notes

  1. All variables of interest (e.g., facial competence, babyfacedness, and attractiveness) ranged between 0 and 1, and represented, for each candidate, the proportion of participants who considered that person to appear more competent, babyfaced, or physically attractive than his or her opponent (see Todorov et al. 2005). As a result, the facial judgments between opposing candidates are perfectly negatively correlated and thus fully redundant. For our analyses, we therefore selected one candidate from each election: the person whose photo happened to be presented on the right side of the survey that was administered to participants (and relative to the candidate’s opponent, whose photo was presented on the left). Because candidate photo positions (right vs. left) were randomly varied across studies, our method for selecting candidates is essentially a random binary process. The differences in vote shares ranged from –1 to +1 and were computed as: (# votes for candidate on the right − # votes for candidate on the left)/(total # of votes). Scores below 0 indicate that the candidate on the left won the election. Scores above 0 indicate that the candidate on the right won the election (a score of 0 would indicate that each candidate received exactly the same number of votes). An alternative analysis, which produces similar results, is to condition the vote share differences and the face judgments on party affiliation (e.g., Democrat vote share and Democrat competence). One disadvantage of this procedure, however, is that it cannot be applied to races where one of the candidates does not belong to one of the two major U.S. parties.

  2. Poutvaara et al. (2009) found that facial competence judgments predicted electoral success for male candidates, but not for female candidates, in Finnish elections. Chiao et al. (2008) found a negative relationship between facial competence and electoral success for male candidates, and no relationship for female candidates, in the 2006 House of Representatives races (although they also found that facial competence positively predicted success for both genders in hypothetical elections). Using the data on U.S. Senate, House, and gubernatorial elections (see Fig. 1), we compared the predictive power of facial competence judgments in elections where one candidate was female and the other male (female-male elections) with those in which both candidates were male (male-male elections). Regressing candidates’ vote shares on their facial competence scores (separately for each election type and gender pairing, and after controlling for several other variables) revealed that, across all three political races, facial competence (positively) predicted vote share equally well for female and male candidates who faced-off against a male candidate (i.e., the regression coefficient for facial competence was positive and significant in every case, except the male-male gubernatorial elections, for which it was marginally significant). In fact, in all three types of elections, the beta coefficient for facial competence was higher for female candidates than for their male counterparts (although this difference was never statistically significant). Thus we found, contrary to Poutvaara et al. (2009) and Chiao et al. (2008), that facial competence was at least as good at predicting electoral success for female candidates as it was for male candidates. Clearly, more studies are needed to determine whether gender moderates the predictive power of facial competence.

References

  • Ambadar, Z., Schooler, J. W., & Cohn, J. F. (2005). Deciphering the enigmatic face: The Importance of facial dynamics in interpreting subtle facial expressions. Psychological Science, 16, 403–410.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ambady, N., & Rosenthal, R. (1992). Thin slices of expressive behavior as predictors of interpersonal consequences: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 256–274.

    Google Scholar 

  • Antonakis, J., & Dalgas, O. (2009). Predicting elections: Child’s play!. Science, 323, 1183.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Atkinson, M. D., Enos, R. D., & Hill, S. J. (2009). Candidate faces and election outcomes: Is the face-vote correlation caused by candidate selection? Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 4, 229–249.

    Google Scholar 

  • Babad, E. (1999). Preferential treatment in television interviewing: Evidence from nonverbal behavior. Political Communication, 16, 337–358.

    Google Scholar 

  • Babad, E. (2005). The psychological price of media bias. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 11, 245–255.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bailenson, J. N., Iyengar, S., Yee, N., & Collins, N. A. (2008). Facial similarity between voters and candidates causes influence. Public Opinion Quarterly, 72, 935–961.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ballew, C. C., & Todorov, A. (2007). Predicting political elections from rapid and unreflective face judgments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 104, 17948–17953.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Banducci, S. A., Karp, J. A., Thrasher, M., & Rallings, C. (2008). Ballot photographs as cues in low-information elections. Political Psychology, 29, 903–917.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bar, M., Neta, M., & Linz, H. (2006). Very first impressions. Emotion, 6, 269–278.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett, A. W., & Barrington, L. W. (2005a). Is a picture worth a thousand words? Newspaper photographs and voter evaluations of political candidates. The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 10, 98–113.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barrett, A. W., & Barrington, L. W. (2005b). Bias in newspaper photograph selection. Political Research Quarterly, 58, 609–618.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bartels, L. M. (2000). Partisanship and voting behavior, 1952–1996. American Journal of Political Science, 44, 35–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin, D. J., & Shapiro, J. M. (2009). Thin-slice forecasts of gubernatorial elections. Review of Economics and Statistics, 91, 523–536.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Berry, D. S. (1990). What can a moving face tell us? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 1004–1014.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Blair, I. V., Judd, C. M., & Chapleau, K. M. (2004). The influence of afrocentric facial features in criminal sentencing. Psychological Science, 15, 674–679.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Blanz, V, & Vetter, T. (1999). A morphable model for the synthesis of 3D faces. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, 187–194.

  • Blanz, V., & Vetter, T. (2003). Face recognition based on fitting a 3D morphable model. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 25, 1063–1074.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bould, E., & Morris, N. (2008). Role of motion signals in recognizing subtle facial expressions of emotion. British Journal of Psychology, 99, 167–189.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bould, E., Morris, N., & Wink, B. (2008). Recognising subtle emotional expressions: The role of facial movements. Cognition & Emotion, 22, 1569–1587.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buckley, F., Collins, N., & Reidy, T. (2007). Ballot paper photographs and low-information elections in Ireland. Politics, 27, 174–181.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bucy, E. P. (2000). Emotional and evaluative consequences of inappropriate leader displays. Communication Research, 27, 194–226.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bucy, E. P., & Grabe, M. E. (2007). Taking television seriously: A sound and image bite analysis of presidential campaign coverage, 1992–2004. Journal of Communication, 57, 652–675.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castelli, L., Carraro, L., Ghitti, C., & Pastore, M. (2009). The effects of perceived competence and sociability on electoral outcomes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1152–1155.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cherulnik, P. D., Donley, K. A., Wiewel, T. S. R., & Miller, S. R. (2001). Charisma is contagious: The effect of leaders’ charisma on observers’ affect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31, 2149–2159.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chiao, J. Y., Bowman, N. E., & Gill, H. (2008). The political gender gap: Gender bias in facial inferences that predict voting behavior. PLoS ONE, 3, 1–7.

    Google Scholar 

  • Converse, P. E. (1964). The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In D. Apter (Ed.), Ideology and discontent. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Druckman, J. N. (2003). The power of television images: The first Kennedy-Nixon debate revisited. Journal of Politics, 65, 559–571.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eberhardt, J. L., Davies, P. G., Purdie-Vaughns, V. J., & Johnson, S. L. (2006). Looking deathworthy: Perceived stereotypicality of Black defendants predicts capital-sentencing outcomes. Psychological Science, 17, 383–386.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, H., & Zebrowitz, L. A. (1992). The contribution of typical sex differences in facial maturity to sex role stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 430–438.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, H. S., DiMatteo, M. R., & Mertz, T. I. (1980). Nonverbal communication on television news: The facial expressions of broadcasters during coverage of a presidential election campaign. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 6, 427–435.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gorn, G. J., Jiang, Y., & Johar, G. V. (2008). Babyfaces, trait inferences, and company evaluations in a public relations crisis. Journal of Consumer Research, 35, 36–49.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504–528.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gregory, S. W., Jr., & Gallagher, T. J. (2002). Spectral analysis of candidates’ nonverbal vocal communication: Predicting U.S. presidential election outcomes. Social Psychology Quarterly, 65, 298–308.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, C. C., Goren, A., Chaiken, S., & Todorov, A. (2009). Shallow cues with deep effects: Trait judgments from faces and voting decisions. In E. Borgida, J. L. Sullivan, & C. M. Federico (Eds.), The political psychology of democratic citizenship (pp. 73–99). New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hassin, R., & Trope, Y. (2000). Facing faces: Studies on the cognitive aspects of physiognomy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 837–852.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hassin, R. R., Uleman, J. S., & Bargh, J. A. (Eds.). (2005). The new unconscious. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huddy, L., & Terkildsen, N. (1993). Gender stereotypes and the perception of male and female candidates. American Journal of Political Science, 37, 119–147.

    Google Scholar 

  • John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 102–138). New York: Guilford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johns, R., & Shephard, M. (2007). Gender, candidate image and electoral preference. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 9, 434–460.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahn, K. F., & Kenney, P. J. (2002). The slant of the news. American Political Science Review, 96, 381–394.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman, D. (2003). A perspective on judgment and choice. American Psychologist, 58, 697–720.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (Eds.). (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keating, C. F., Randall, D., & Kendrick, T. (1999). Presidential physiognomies: Altered images, altered perceptions. Political Psychology, 20, 593–610.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuklinski, J. H., & Quirk, P. J. (2000). Reconsidering the rational public: Cognition, heuristics, and mass opinion. In A. Lupia, M. D. McCubbins, & S. L. Popkin (Eds.), Elements of reason: Cognition, choice, and the bounds of rationality (pp. 153–182). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • LaBar, K. S., Crupain, M. J., Voyvodic, J. T., & McCarthy, G. (2003). Dynamic perception of facial affect and identity in the human brain. Cerebral Cortex, 13, 1023–1033.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lakin, J. L. (2006). Automatic cognitive processes and nonverbal communication. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 59–77). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lander, K. (2008). Relating visual and vocal attractiveness for moving and static faces. Animal Behaviour, 75, 817–822.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lander, K., & Bruce, V. (2000). Recognizing famous faces: Exploring the benefits of facial motion. Ecological Psychology, 12, 259–272.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lander, K., & Bruce, V. (2003). The role of motion in learning new faces. Visual Cognition, 10, 897–912.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lander, K., Christie, F., & Bruce, V. (1999). The role of movement in the recognition of famous faces. Memory & Cognition, 27, 974–985.

    Google Scholar 

  • Langlois, J. H., Kalakanis, L., Rubenstein, A. J., Larson, A., Hallam, M., & Smoot, M. (2000). Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 390–423.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lau, R. R., & Redlawsk, D. P. (2001). Advantages and disadvantages of cognitive heuristics in political decision making. American Journal of Political Science, 45, 951–971.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lau, R. R., & Redlawsk, D. P. (2006). How voters decide: Information processing during election campaigns. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lawson, C., & Lenz, G. S. (2007). Looking like a presidente: Appearance and electability among Mexican candidates. Unpublished manuscript, Department of political science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  • Lenz, G., & Lawson, C. (2008). Looking the part: Television leads less informed citizens to vote based on candidates’ appearance. Unpublished manuscript, Department of political science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  • Levine, G. M., Halberstadt, J. B., & Goldstone, R. L. (1996). Reasoning and the weighting of attributes in attitude judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 230–240.

    Google Scholar 

  • Little, A. C., Burriss, R. P., Jones, B. C., & Roberts, S. C. (2007). Facial appearance affects voting decisions. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 18–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Locher, P., Unger, R., Sociedade, P., & Wahl, J. (1993). At first glance: Accessibility of the physical attractiveness stereotype. Sex Roles, 28, 729–743.

    Google Scholar 

  • Machiavelli, N. (1532/1898). The Prince. London: George Bell & Sons.

  • Martin, D. S. (1978). Person perception and real-life electoral behavior. Australian Journal of Psychology, 30, 255.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mattes, K., Spezio, M. L., Kim, H., Todorov, A., Adolphs, R., & Alvarez, R.M. (in press). Predicting election outcomes from positive and negative trait assessments of candidate images. Political Psychology.

  • Miller, A., Wattenberg, M., & Malanchuck, O. (1986). Schematic assessments of presidential candidates. American Political Science Review, 80, 521–540.

    Google Scholar 

  • Montepare, J. M., & Dobish, H. (2003). The contribution of emotion perception and their overgeneralization to trait impressions. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 27, 237–254.

    Google Scholar 

  • Montepare, J. M., & Zebrowitz, L. A. (1998). Person perception comes of age: The salience and significance of age in social judgments. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 93–161.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mueller, U., & Mazur, A. (1996). Facial dominance of West Point cadets as predictor of later military rank. Social Forces, 74, 823–850.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mullen, B., Futrell, D., Stairs, D., Tice, D. M., Baumeister, R. F., Dawson, K. E., et al. (1986). Newscasters’ facial expressions and voting behavior of viewers: Can a smile elect a president? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 291–295.

    Google Scholar 

  • Naylor, R. W. (2007). Nonverbal cues-based first impressions: Impression formation through exposure to static images. Marketing Letters, 18, 165–179.

    Google Scholar 

  • Noller, P., Gallois, C., Hayes, A., & Bohle, P. (1988). Impressions of politicians: The effect of situation and communication channel. Australian Journal of Psychology, 40, 267–280.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olivola, C. Y., & Todorov, A. (in press). Fooled by first impressions? Reexamining the diagnostic value of appearance-based inferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

  • Olivola, C. Y., Eastwick, P. W., Finkel, E. J., Hortaçsu, A., Ariely, D., & Todorov, A. (2009). A picture is worth a thousand inferences: First impressions and mate selection in Internet matchmaking and speed-dating. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences, University College London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olson, I. R., & Marshuetz, C. (2005). Facial attractiveness is appraised in a glance. Emotion, 5, 498–502.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Oosterhof, N. N., & Todorov, A. (2008). The functional basis of face evaluation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 105, 11087–11092.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Oosterhof, N. N., & Todorov, A. (2009). Shared perceptual basis of emotional expressions and trustworthiness impressions from faces. Emotion, 9, 128–133.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Peskin, M., & Newell, F. N. (2004). Familiarity breeds attraction: Effects of exposure on the attractiveness of typical and distinctive faces. Perception, 33, 147–157.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pope, D. G., & Sydnor, J. (2008). What’s in a picture? Evidence of discrimination from Prosper.com. Unpublished manuscript, University of Pennsylvania.

  • Poutvaara, P., Jordahl, H., & Berggren, N. (2009). Faces of politicians: Babyfacedness predicts inferred competence but not electoral success. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1132–1135.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quattrone, G. A., & Tversky, A. (1988). Contrasting rational and psychological analysis of political choice. American Political Science Review, 82, 716–736.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ravina, E. (2008). Love & loans: The effect of beauty and personal characteristics in credit markets. Unpublished manuscript, Columbia University.

  • Riggle, E. D. (1992). Cognitive strategies and models of voter judgments. American Politics Quarterly, 20, 227–246.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenberg, S. W., Kahn, S., & Tran, T. (1991). Creating a political image: Shaping appearance and manipulating the vote. Political Behavior, 13, 345–367.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rubenstein, A. J. (2005). Variation in perceived attractiveness: Differences between dynamic and static faces. Psychological Science, 16, 759–762.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rule, N. O., & Ambady, N. (2008). The face of success: Inferences of personality from chief executive officers’ appearance predict company profits. Psychological Science, 19, 109–111.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., Adams, R. B., Jr., & Macrae, C. N. (2008). Accuracy and awareness in the perception and categorization of male sexual orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1019–1028.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., Adams, R. B., Jr., Ozono, H., Nakashima, S., Yoshikawa, S., & Watabe, M. (in press). Polling the face: Prediction and consensus across cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

  • Said, C., Sebe, N., & Todorov, A. (2009). Structural resemblance to emotional expressions predicts evaluation of emotionally neutral faces. Emotion, 9, 260–264.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sato, W., & Yoshikawa, S. (2007). Enhanced experience of emotional arousal in response to dynamic facial expressions. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 31, 119–135.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sato, W., Kochiyama, T., Yoshikawa, S., Naito, E., & Matsumura, M. (2004). Enhanced neural activity in response to dynamic facial expressions of emotion: An fMRI study. Cognitive Brain Research, 20, 81–91.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sato, W., Fujimura, T., & Suzuki, N. (2008). Enhanced facial EMG activity in response to dynamic facial expressions. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 70, 70–74.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Shephard, M., & Johns, R. (2008). Candidate image and electoral preference in Britain. British Politics, 3, 324–349.

    Google Scholar 

  • Singular Inversions. (2006). FaceGen 3.1 Ful l SDK Documentation. http://facegen.com.

  • Spezio, M. L., Rangel, A., Alvarez, R. M., O’Doherty, J. P., Mattes, K., Todorov, A., et al. (2008). A neural basis for the effect of candidate appearance on election outcomes. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 3, 344–352.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Thornton, I. M., & Kourtzi, Z. (2002). A matching advantage for dynamic human faces. Perception, 31, 113–132.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Todorov, A. (2008). Evaluating faces on trustworthiness: An extension of systems for recognition of emotions signaling approach/avoidance behaviors. In A. Kingstone & M. Miller (Eds.), The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience 2008: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (Vol. 1124, pp. 208–224).

  • Todorov, A. (in press). Evaluating faces on social dimensions. In A. Todorov, S.T. Fiske, & D. Prentice (Eds.), Social neuroscience: Toward understanding the underpinnings of the social mind. Oxford University Press.

  • Todorov, A., & Uleman, J. S. (2002). Spontaneous trait inferences are bound to actor’s faces: Evidence from a false recognition paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1051–1065.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Todorov, A., & Uleman, J. S. (2003). The efficiency of binding spontaneous trait inferences to actor’s faces. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 549–562.

    Google Scholar 

  • Todorov, A., Chaiken, S., & Henderson, M. D. (2002). The heuristic-systematic model of social information processing. In J. P. Dillard & M. Pfau (Eds.), The persuasion handbook: Developments in theory and practice (pp. 195–211). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Todorov, A., Mandisodza, A. N., Goren, A., & Hall, C. (2005). Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science, 308, 1623–1626.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Todorov, A., Said, C. P., Engell, A. D., & Oosterhof, N. N. (2008). Understanding evaluation of faces on social dimensions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 455–460.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Todorov, A., Pakrashi, M., & Oosterhof, N. N. (2009). Evaluating faces on trustworthiness after minimal time exposure. Social Cognition, 27, 813–833.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trent, J., Mongeau, P., Trent, J., Kendall, K., & Cushing, R. (1993). The ideal candidate: A study of the desired attributes of the public and the media across two presidential campaigns. American Behavioral Scientist, 37, 225–239.

    Google Scholar 

  • Willis, J., & Todorov, A. (2006). First impressions: Making up your mind after 100 ms exposure to a face. Psychological Science, 17, 592–598.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, T. D., & Schooler, J. W. (1991). Thinking too much: Introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 181–192.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Yoshikawa, S., & Sato, W. (2006). Enhanced perceptual, emotional, and motor processing in response to dynamic facial expressions of emotion. Japanese Psychological Research, 48, 213–222.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monograph Supplement, 9, 1–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zaller, J. R. (1992). The nature and origins of mass opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zarkadi, T., Wade, K. A., & Stewart, N. (2009). Creating fair lineups for suspects with distinctive features. Psychological Science, 20, 1448–1453.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zebrowitz, L. A. (1997). Reading faces: Window to the soul? Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zebrowitz, L. A. (2004). The origins of first impressions. Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology, 2, 93–108.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zebrowitz, L. A., & McDonald, S. M. (1991). The impact of litigants’ babyfacedness and attractiveness on adjudication in small claims courts. Law and Human Behavior, 15, 603–623.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zebrowitz, L. A., & Montepare, J. M. (2005). Appearance DOES matter. Science, 308, 1565–1566.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zebrowitz, L. A., & Montepare, J. M. (2006). The ecological approach to person perception: Evolutionary roots and contemporary offshoots. In M. Schaller, J. A. Simpson, & D. T. Kenrick (Eds.), Evolution and social psychology (pp. 81–113). New York: Psychology Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zebrowitz, L. A., & Montepare, J. M. (2008). Social psychological face perception: Why appearance matters. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 1497–1517.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zebrowitz, L. A., Fellous, J. M., Mignault, A., & Andreoletti, C. (2003). Trait impressions as overgeneralized responses to adaptively significant facial qualities: Evidence from connectionist modeling. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 194–215.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zebrowitz, L. A., White, B., & Wieneke, K. (2008). Mere exposure and racial prejudice: Exposure to other-race faces increases liking for strangers of that race. Social Cognition, 26, 259–275.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zebrowitz-McArthur, L., & Montepare, J. M. (1989). Contributions of a babyface and a childlike voice to impressions of moving and talking faces. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 13, 189–203.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Howard Friedman, Joann Montepare, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and insightful comments, as well as Valerie Loehr, Anesu Mandisodza, Nick Oosterhof, Manish Pakrashi, and Jenny Porter for their excellent research assistance. We also thank Gabriel Lenz and Chappell Lawson for allowing us to use their data. This research was supported by a SAGE Young Scholar Award to AT and a Woodrow Wilson School Social Policy Fellowship to CYO.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP, UK

    Christopher Y. Olivola

  2. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA

    Alexander Todorov

Authors
  1. Christopher Y. Olivola
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Alexander Todorov
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Christopher Y. Olivola or Alexander Todorov.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Olivola, C.Y., Todorov, A. Elected in 100 milliseconds: Appearance-Based Trait Inferences and Voting. J Nonverbal Behav 34, 83–110 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-009-0082-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-009-0082-1

Keywords

  • First impressions
  • Voting
  • Political decision making
  • Face perception
  • Social cognition