When the Party Decides: The Effects of Facial Competence and Dominance on Internal Nominations of Political Candidates

Virtual first impressions: Zoom backgrounds affect judgements of trust and competence

Trait inferences from first impressions are drawn rapidly and spontaneously. However, the Covid-19 pandemic forced interactions online introducing differential influential factors on first impressions. As such, there is an absence of research investigating video background on videoconferencing impression formation. This study explored the influence of video background, facial expression, and gender on first impressions of trustworthiness and competence. Video background affected trustworthy and competence perceptions with Plants and Book backgrounds scoring highly on both dimensions while the Home and Novelty backgrounds consistently received the lowest ratings. Happy faces were perceived as more trustworthy and more competent while female faces were also rated as more trustworthy and more competent, regardless of the background they were using. The explanations for these findings are discussed, along with future directions for research and the implications for videoconferencing use.

Preference for leaders with high and low facial width-to-height ratios: moderating roles of political ideology and voting context

BACKGROUND

It has been argued that human ancestors evolved greater sensitivity to certain traits that signal dominance in potential leaders. From this perspective, modern voters still favor certain physical characteristics during political elections. Indeed, previous studies have shown that voters prefer dominant candidates, especially when primed with wartime scenarios, and with conservative voters being more likely to choose a dominant leader. Because facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) was found to be positively associated with perceived dominance, we sought to investigate the effect of fWHR on leader preference by taking into an account voting context and voters' political ideology.

PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE

A total of 148 participants took part in two online experiments in which we manipulated standardized facial images to represent faces with low and high fWHR. Furthermore, we assessed participants' political ideology and asked them to rate the extent to which faces with low and high fWHR looked like leaders during wartime and peacetime scenarios.

RESULTS

Preference for leaders with high fWHR was positively related to participants' political ideology, but only in a wartime scenario, suggesting that the more conservative participants were, the higher was their preference for leaders with high fWHR. This is consistent with the notion that preferences for dominant-looking leaders vary as a function of the contextual (voting context) and individual differences (political ideology).

CONCLUSIONS

The present findings provide new evidence for the contribution of fWHR in leader preference and significantly adds to the results of previous research demonstrating the roles of voters' political ideology and politicians' physical characteristics in perceiving leadership abilities.

Dominant leaders and the political psychology of followership

What is the psychology underlying preferences for dominant political leaders? Against earlier theories about authoritarianism and submissiveness, recent research shows that followers strategically promote dominant individuals to leadership positions in order to enhance their ability to aggress against other groups. Thus, recent evidence supports the existence of dedicated mechanisms for generating summary impressions of the dominance of potential leaders from a wealth of cues. Furthermore, research demonstrates how preferences for dominant leaders are heightened in contexts of conflict and among individuals prone to view the social world as conflictual. At the same time, this research shows that followers intuitively fear exploitation from dominant leaders and the political psychology of followership also contains dedicated mechanisms for identifying and counteracting such exploitation.