Looks, politicians & rational voters

Good-looking politicians are more likely to get elected than munters. This recent paper (pdf) by Andrew Leigh and Amy King found that, in the 2004 Australian House of Representatives elections, candidates who scored one standard deviation higher for looks won 1.5-2 percentage points more of the vote. This isn’t a quirk of Australian voters. Other researchers have found a similar thing true in Finland (pdf) and Germany (pdf in German).
But is this (weak) preference for good-looking politicians irrational? Five things lead me to suspect not.
1. In labour markets around the world, there’s a premium on beauty. The structure of this premium is often similar to that found by Leigh and King: a bigger premium for men than women, and a bigger penalty for ugliness than premium for looks. This suggests employers have a preference for better lookers. Should we really blame voters for doing what employers generally do? Or mightn’t it be that employers know something about hiring candidates, and this something is worth following?
2. There’s some evidence that looks and ability are correlated. This doesn’t come so much from the alleged IQ-beauty correlation, which might be spurious (pdf) but from exams, in which better lookers do better.
3. Good-looking people tend to be more confident.  This might be desirable in a politician. It might help project one’s country better on the “global stage”, or help your government drive better bargains in international negotiations.
4. It’s very expensive - and perhaps impossible - to learn a politicians’ true abilities, especially before they have entered office. So, given the possibility that points 1-3 might be valid, why not use looks as a quick and dirty heuristic, a proxy for ability?
5.  Elected politicians appear in the media more than defeated ones. So if we must look at their faces more, why shouldn‘t we choose the prettier ones?
All this raises an issue. I guess your instinctive reaction to the finding that beauty matters for politicians was: “Isn’t it stupid of voters to be so shallow? Surely, it’s policy and ishoos that matter, not  triviality like appearances.”
But could this reaction be wrong? I mean, other evidence suggests that policy doesn’t matter as much as you might think. So mightn’t voters’ shallowness be in fact quite reasonable? And could it be that those who take a high-minded attitude to politics are in fact merely practicing the rituals of rationality, rather than the substance of it?

Comments

[Luis Enrique]

I suppose it's not too different from saying it makes sense to vote for eloquent politicians who are pleasing to the ear, which people certainly to say. You can justify that by saying eloquent politicians are more persuasive, just as you can say good looking politicians are more persuasive.

As far as I'm concerned the world would be a better place if people paid no attention to looks in this context, so I'd do my best to ignore looks and encourage others to do the same, on the basis of trying to make the world a better place.

(everything has it's limits though. Brown is just too painful to listen to.)

[Chris Bertram]

from exams, in which better lookers do better.

As dsquared suggested at CT the other day, this could well be because teachers are more attentive to the better-looking kids, who, in turn are encouraged, whereas the ugly ones are correspondingly discouraged.

[Bruce]

They are our representatives. Unless they are good looking, they cannot represent me very well.

[Laura]

How about people who've had plastic surgery to improve their looks? Do they score like their new attractiveness category or their old one for career prospects? Does it matter when the plastic surgery is done? Do you need to have the looks-enhancing plastic surgery before school age to fully benefit? Or (unlikely as this may seem) are looks simply an external representation of internal qualities that can't be changed - so people who've been made more or less attractive by plastic surgery still have career prospects that match their original appearance? And does it matter if the prospective employer or voter knows the candidate has had plastic surgery?

[chris]

Laura - I've not seen any research on this issue. My hunch is that plastic surgery could be earnings-enhancing, insofar as it raises one's self-confidence.
There is evidence that spending on makeup and the like makes a difference:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Hamermesh/LE2002.pdf.

[Paulie]

Two comments.

1. (And this more of a question really) - Is it really that electoral results suggest that people want politicians to be attractive, or is it that the averages are skewed by them NOT voting for very ugly people? Is it the case that people don't mind as long as you're not a *total* minger?

2. I'd suggest that selection processes also favour people who are more attractive in the flesh than they are on TV as the 'selectorate' is at least as important as the electorate within political parties. In my occasional meetings with senior politicians, on a few occasions (including one where the politician concerned often gets adverse comments appearance-wise) I've remarked that they look a great deal more attractive in the flesh than they do on camera. By contrast, I used to work next door to a modelling studio and we often used to get fashion models knocking on our door by mistake. There's no question that they looked a great deal better on camera without any perspective behind them (the reason why photographers often choose short men - they look a lot better as long as there isn't anyone standing next to them). A few photographers told me that very skinny tall women look better in pics than they do in the flesh.

[Julian Ware-Lane]

I sorted of have this covered (I hope) ... http://warelane.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/vote-for-the-ugly-guy/

[denver plastic surgery]

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