Can Attractive Candidates Win Even With Negative Histories?

Experimental Research Design

The research study explores the influence of physical attractiveness on the selection of elected officials of a student body when pejorative information about the candidate is readily evident. College freshmen subjects were asked to identify the student body candidates for whom they would vote by looking at photographs of the candidates and reading descriptions about them. The subjects were randomly assigned to either an experimental group or a control group. To measure the influence of physical attractiveness on the subjects' choice of candidates, the photographs used in the two sets of voter pamphlets were the same. However, the descriptions associated with the candidates varied along dimensions of social desirability, including mentions of history of aggressive behavior or altruism.

Literature Review

Research indicates that physical attractiveness is highly influential in human interactions and relationships. The literature is replete with the advantages and benefits that physical attractive people are afforded. Indeed, physical attractiveness has been highly associated with successful political campaign outcomes. The media often covers stories about physically attractive high profile and prominent people who have been forgiven by the public for transgressions that would have dire outcomes for people who live their lives outside the limelight. One study demonstrated that by manipulating the image quality of a hypothetical candidate, the subjects made reliable, differentiated judgments about the candidates' character and fitness for office. Political candidates are known to include positive attributes in campaign promotional material, particularly content that indicates the candidate has engaged in altruistic behavior. At all costs, political candidates seek to avoid any content that suggests they may have a history of an aggressive past, such as domestic violence or assault.

Voters perceive small cues related to candidates that greatly influence their voting intention. Moreover, campaign messages are received passively, but they trigger active generation of inferences as voters engage in cognitive gap-filling when additional information is not forthcoming. Voters show no inclination to separate candidate image from political platform issues. Interestingly, when voters were exposed to commercials focused on issues, they held a more positive image of the candidate than when they were exposed to commercials focused on the images of the candidates (Garramone, 1986).

The theoretical frameworks that form the background for this research indicate that negative information influences the judgments people make about elected officials in situation specific ways (Fridkin & Kenney, 2004). The research shows that the most influential negative messages are those that are delivered in a manner that appears legitimate and that stays centered on a particular relevant topic (Fridkin & Kenney, 2004). To the contrary, when negative messages are overly strident in delivery and when they contain information that is not relevant to a particular topic, then both the target of the message and the candidate disseminating the message are negatively impacted.

Fridkin and Kenney (2004) found that negative messages influence voter opinions and perceptions variously depending on several important situations: The status and characteristics of the candidate delivering the negative message and of the candidate whom the message is about, and the particular delivery style of the message containing the criticisms of the candidate -- that is, whether the negative message was focused on policy or on personal attacks. Personal attacks are perceived as more pejorative than attacks that focus on policy issues. This study is designed to explore the influence on voter behavior of information about political candidates that may be categorized as altruistic or aggressive, and to examine the weighting attributed to physical attractiveness of candidates in association with these attributes that are at opposite poles of human behavior.

Methodology

The underlying question motivating this study is to what degree does the physical attractiveness of political candidates influence the decisions people make when they vote.

Research Questions

Question #1 -- How likely are voters to ignore pejorative information about candidates?

Question #2 -- How likely are voters to accept at face value pejorative information or praise about a candidate for political office?

Question #3 -- To what extent does content related to altruistic behavior influence a voter's perspective of a candidate for office?

The purpose of this experimental study is to explore the influence of physical attractiveness on the selection of elected representatives by college freshmen. A non-probability sampling approach will be used, which will generate some limitations that the researcher must address. The small sample size increases the chance that sampling error will occur. Moreover, there is an issue of non-participation since not every member of the college freshman class who is selected will choose to participate in the study.