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Inferring Whether Officials Are Corruptible From Looking at Their Faces
Chujun Lin1, Ralph Adolphs1, R Michael Alvarez1
1Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology.
Psychological Science
|September 13, 2018
Summary
Facial inferences about politicians
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Political Science
- Forensic Psychology
Background:
- Facial inferences often reflect stereotypes.
- Some facial trait judgments correlate with real-world behaviors and outcomes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the association between facial inferences and political corruption.
- To explore whether perceived corruptibility is linked to actual corrupt behavior in public officials.
Main Methods:
- Four preregistered studies with 325 participants.
- Participants judged traits of unfamiliar government officials based on photographs.
- Digital manipulation of facial width was used to test causal influence.
Main Results:
- Officials convicted of corruption were perceived as more corruptible, dishonest, selfish, and aggressive.
- Perceived competence, ambition, and masculinity were not significantly different.
- Face width causally influenced judgments of corruptibility.
Conclusions:
- Facial appearance, specifically face width, can influence perceptions of political corruption.
- These findings highlight the complex link between facial cues and social behavior in political contexts.
Keywords:
corruptionface perceptionopen dataopen materialspolitical psychologypreregisteredsocial attributionstereotypingMore Related Videos
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