http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/the-gop-has-a-feminine-face-finds-238867
At least when it comes to female politicians, perhaps you can judge a book by its cover, suggest two UCLA researchers who looked at facial features and political stances in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"Female politicians with stereotypically feminine facial features are more likely to be Republican than Democrat, and the correlation increases the more conservative the lawmaker's voting record," said lead author Colleen M. Carpinella, a UCLA graduate student in psychology.
The researchers also found the opposite to be true: Female politicians with less stereotypically feminine facial features were more likely to be Democrats, and the more liberal their voting record, the greater the distance the politician's appearance strayed from stereotypical gender norms.
In fact, the relationship is so strong that politically uninformed undergraduates were able to determine the political affiliation of the representatives with an overall accuracy rate that exceeded chance, and the accuracy of those predications increased in direct relation to the lawmaker's proximity to feminine norms.
"I suppose we could call it the 'Michele Bachmann effect,'" said Kerri Johnson, the study's senior author and an assistant professor of communication studies and psychology at UCLA.
The findings are forthcoming online in the peer-reviewed Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
The work was inspired by prior research that has shown that Americans have a better-than-chance ability to determine whether someone is a Democrat or a Republican on the basis of appearance alone. The mechanism behind these judgments, however, is not well understood.
"At least when it comes to female politicians, assessing how much a face reflects gender norms may be one way of guessing political affiliations," said Johnson.
Carpinella and Johnson focused on the House of Representatives because the body was large enough to yield statistically valid results and its members would not be as easily recognized by study subjects as members of more high-profile political bodies, such as the U.S. Senate.
They started the project by feeding portraits of 434 members of the 111th House of Representatives into a computer modeling program used by researchers in their field. Loaded with a database of hundreds of scans of faces of men and women, the FaceGen Modeler allows researchers to measure how much the details of any one face approach the average for either gender.
The model compared each representative's face to the norm on more than 100 subtle dimensions, including the shape of the jaw, the location of eyebrows, the placement of cheek bones, the shape of eyes, the contour of the forehead, the fullness of the lips and the distance between such features as the bottom of the nose and the top of the lip. Armed with these dimensions, the researchers were able to arrive at an amalgamated score assessing the extent to which the face exhibited characteristics common to men or to women. Theoretical values ranged from -40 (highly male-typed) to +40 (highly female-typed).
"We weren't looking at hairstyle, jewelry or whether a person was wearing make up or not," Carpinella said. "We wanted to get an objective measure of how masculine or feminine a face is, based on a scientifically derived average for male or female appearance."
In addition to party affiliation, the researchers took into account each politician's DW–NOMINATE score, a scale developed by political scientists that uses voting records to determine how conservative or liberal a lawmaker is.
Because the GOP is more frequently associated with policies that uphold traditional sex roles, the researchers expected to find that Republican representatives of both sexes would have more sex-typical faces than their counterparts across the aisle. The theory, however, did not hold for male politicians. In a finding that the researchers do not view as a particularly revealing, the faces of male Republicans, on average, scored as less masculine than the faces of their Democratic counterparts.
"The Democratic Party is associated with social liberal policies that aim to diminish gender disparities, whereas the Republican Party is associated with socially conservative policy issues that tend to bolster traditional sex roles," Johnson said. "These policy platforms are manifest in each party's image — apparently also in the physical characteristics exhibited by politicians."
Originally posted by EladarHistory tells us (American) feminism was established out of wanting equal rights with men.
Rush used to say it differently.
He said this...
[b]Feminism Was Established So As To Allow Unattractive Women Easier Access To The Mainstream Of Pop Culture
Guess Rush was right again.[/b]
Now that the GOP has had two monumentally stupid presidents in a row, I'd suggested staying clear of unintelligent comments like this.
Originally posted by vivifyJackie O
This study may have a point. Is there a female political pundit more attractive than Tomi Lahren (conservative)? Sarah Palin was a former beauty pageant contestant. Melania Trump is arguably the most attractive first lady in U.S. history.
EDIT Meiliana looks like Caitlyn Jenner
Originally posted by vivifyThere are a grand total of 21 House Republicans who are women. I do not see how that small of a sample size could possibly lead to statistically significant results.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/the-gop-has-a-feminine-face-finds-238867
At least when it comes to female politicians, perhaps you can judge a book by its cover, suggest two UCLA researchers who looked at facial features and political stances in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"Female politicians with stereotypically feminine facial features are m ...[text shortened]... each party's image — apparently also in the physical characteristics exhibited by politicians."
Originally posted by vivifyTalk about biased research. On the one hand a big song and dance is made about the maleness of female Democrats, yet the lack of maleness in male Republicans is not considered of any importance.
...............The theory, however, did not hold for male politicians. In a finding that the researchers do not view as a particularly revealing, the faces of male Republicans, on average, scored as less masculine than the faces of their Democratic counterparts.
"The Democratic Party is associated with social liberal policies that aim to diminish gender disp ...[text shortened]... each party's image — apparently also in the physical characteristics exhibited by politicians."[/b]
So it would no doubt be considered politically incorrect to appropriate aspects of the President's vocabulary to suggest that Republican men are female dominated pussy whipped effete excuses for manhood who can't stand up for social justice because they are spineless sweaty palmed Gollums eager only to enrich themselves and the elite alpha males, whose bitches they are only too eager to become, because they also would die to inhabit the extreme end of the wealth equation.......
Originally posted by kmax87What I really would like to know is how the researchers were able to determine that what they were not in fact observing was not that attractive women were finding the GOP irresistible, but simply that the GOP only allows pathways for success to be accessible to attractive women.
Talk about biased research........
Originally posted by vivifySo, republican women are good to shag, so long as they keep their political gobs shut.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/the-gop-has-a-feminine-face-finds-238867
At least when it comes to female politicians, perhaps you can judge a book by its cover, suggest two UCLA researchers who looked at facial features and political stances in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"Female politicians with stereotypically feminine facial features are m ...[text shortened]... each party's image — apparently also in the physical characteristics exhibited by politicians."
Yeah, I dig that.
Originally posted by kmax87The article says that male dominance or any "alpha" characteristics were already "implied" by their status. Furthermore, the article focuses on women, so maybe male Republicans vs. Democrats may be covered in a different report.
Talk about biased research. On the one hand a big song and dance is made about the maleness of female Democrats, yet the lack of maleness in male Republicans is not considered of any importance.
So it would no doubt be considered politically incorrect to appropriate aspects of the President's vocabulary to suggest that Republican men are female dominated p ...[text shortened]... to become, because they also would die to inhabit the extreme end of the wealth equation.......
What I really would like to know is how the researchers were able to determine that what they were not in fact observing was not that attractive women were finding the GOP irresistible, but simply that the GOP only allows pathways for success to be accessible to attractive women.
The article doesn't merely say that there are a higher number of attractive women associated with the the GOP, but more feminine women tend to gravitate toward conservatism. The study considered voting habits of the women who were considered to be more feminine; the more conservative, the more classically feminine it turned out they were.
So it's not just a matter of the GOP hiring more attractive women, the article makes the case that feminine women are more drawn the conservatism. The article also says it's probably because conservatives stress "traditional", old-fashioned values, which include women being feminine.
But, as No1marauder pointed out, there's not a huge sample size, so that works against the article's favor.
Originally posted by shavixmirIt would be interesting to compare SAT or other academic scores between conservative and liberal women. Conservatives like Sarah Palin, George Bush, Trump, Dan Quayle and others, fit a stereotype of Republican stupidity.
So, republican women are good to shag, so long as they keep their political gobs shut.
Yeah, I dig that.