Why Beauty Matters: Candidates’ Facial Appearance and Electoral Success
Why do better-looking candidates gain more votes in elections? Existing research shows that candidates’ facial appearances—perceived beauty, in particular—affect the fate of their election outcomes.
However, little is known about the mechanisms by which the candidates’ beauty creates a premium in elections. To solve this puzzle, we asked more than 1,400 people to evaluate 494 real candidates’ faces from multiple perspectives. We then analyzed the relationship between the evaluation results and the percentage of votes cast in actual elections to confirm the beauty premium. Subsequently, we conducted a survey experiment with a national sample of approximately 3,000 voters to examine the effects of candidates’ beauty on voter perceptions. We found that beauty attracts voters’ attention and alters their perceptions of candidates’ electability, suggesting that the incentives to seek information and join the bandwagon drive voters to support good-looking candidates. Our findings also reveal that candidates’ facial expressions and impressions do not hinder the positive influence of their perceived beauty on election outcomes. In politics, beauty rules.
Date: 3/23 (Thur)
Time: 9:00 a.m.
Venue: Google Meet (No pre-registration required)
Moderator: Chung-min Tsai (Professor of Political Science, NCCU & Jointly Appointed Professor of TSE, NTHU)
Speakers: Yoshikuni Ono (Professor, School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University, Japan)
Bio:
Yoshikuni Ono is a professor of Political Science at Waseda University, a faculty fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, and a research director at the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research. He completed his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Michigan. Before joining Waseda University, he held academic appointments at Tohoku University and the International University of Japan. His work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, Political Science Research and Methods, Public Opinion Quarterly, and other journals.
Joining Info:
- This event is free and open to all. No pre-registration required.
- The event will be held via Google Meet and will be recorded for archival, educational, and related promotional purposes.
- Please enter the online meeting with your microphone muted.
