Baby-Faced Politicians, Beware!

Researchers have concluded that voters give thumbs-down to baby-faced politicians!!

Researchers at Princeton University in New Jersey, US, carried out studies to determine the importance of candidates’ facial appearance in determining election success.

The researchers found a strong correlation between those candidates judged “competent” and election wins. Judging on competence alone, participants correctly predicted the winners in about 70% of the congressional races.

So what exactly does a “competent” person look like? Writing a review accompanying the paper in Science, psychologist Leslie Zebrowitz from Brandeis University in Massachusetts describes the trait as being less “baby-faced”. A round face, large eyes, small nose, high forehead and small chin are baby-faced features, she says, whereas competency is associated with facial maturity.

“Although the study doesn’t tell us exactly what competence is, its traits include physical strength, social dominance and intellectual shrewdness, and baby-faced people are perceived as lacking in all these qualities, regardless of sex and ethnicity. We often conclude that baby-faced adults are naive, submissive and weak,” she says.

Wow! What, then, explains the electoral success of this baby-faced desi politician?!!