Although judgments in the unlimited time condition and deliberation judgments share variance ( r = 0.82, P < 0.001), perhaps reflecting controlled processing, this shared variance should not predict the outcome of the races to the extent that these predictions are based on rapid, intuitive judgments. Additional time does not necessarily lead to changes in judgments, although it may lead to increased confidence in judgments ( 6). This finding suggests that intuitive judgments are affected by the deliberative mind set rather than by the additional time for judgments. 6), the predictive accuracy of judgments was only affected in the latter condition ( Fig. Analysis at the level of participants.Īlthough the response times for the judgments in the unlimited time (Experiment 1) and deliberation (Experiment 2) conditions were almost identical ( Fig. Thus, in Experiment 2, participants made judgments only for the 55 races in which the candidates were of the same sex and ethnicity. Averaging across the three conditions, the percentage of correctly predicted races was 69.1%, and the linear correlation between the perceived competence of the candidates and the vote share was 0.32 ( P < 0.017). In fact, when the analysis was limited to the 55 gubernatorial races in which the winner and the runner-up were of the same gender and ethnicity, the predictions improved, just as they did in our previous work on Senate elections ( 3). Moreover, the salience of the latter factors can activate gender and race stereotypes and, accordingly, change participants' responses. The findings suggest that rapid, unreflective judgments of competence from faces can affect voting decisions.įrom a psychological point of view, races in which the candidates are of the same gender and ethnicity are more interesting because differences in judgments of competence cannot be attributed to differences in gender and ethnicity. These effects were independent of the incumbency status of the candidates. Finally, competence judgments collected before the elections in 2006 predicted 68.6% of the gubernatorial races and 72.4% of the Senate races (Experiment 3). Asking participants to deliberate and make a good judgment dramatically increased the response times and reduced the predictive accuracy of judgments relative to both judgments made after 250 ms of exposure to the faces and judgments made within a response deadline of 2 s (Experiment 2). Predictions were as accurate after a 100-ms exposure to the faces of the winner and the runner-up as exposure after 250 ms and unlimited time exposure (Experiment 1). To ensure that competence judgments were based solely on facial appearance and not on prior person knowledge, judgments for races in which the participant recognized any of the faces were excluded from all analyses. In all experiments, participants were presented with the faces of the winner and the runner-up and asked to decide who is more competent. Here we show that rapid judgments of competence based solely on the facial appearance of candidates predicted the outcomes of gubernatorial elections, the most important elections in the United States next to the presidential elections.
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