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Updated: May 27, 2026

Holistic Facial Composite Creation and Subsequent Video Line-up Eyewitness Identification Paradigm
Published on: December 24, 2015
Judging political affiliation from faces of UK MPs
Tom Roberts1, Harry Griffin, Peter W McOwan
1Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology (CoMPLEX), UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK. thomas.roberts.10@ucl.ac.uk
Abstract:
Subjects were shown photographs of UK MPs' faces and asked to judge their political affiliations. Participants were unable to correctly distinguish between Conservative and Labour politicians. However, their responses were used to create computer-generated idealised faces representative of each party, which independent evaluators could correctly identify. These faces give an indication of the mental images we might reference when imagining MPs from the two main UK political parties.
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