Taking our leaders at face value

The qualities that voters think they can discern in a candidate's face have a surprisingly strong influence on how they vote. In fact, if you take the new research at face value, how much voters like (or dislike) a candidate's face is the only thing that will decide who wins or loses.

What matters to voters isn't so much whether a candidate is attractive or not. Instead, voters look for facial cues for personality traits like aggressiveness, intelligence, honesty, friendliness, and competence. The surprising thing isn't that people look for these cues – it's that judgments about a candidate's face all by themselves seem to predict whether he or she will win or lose the election.