Predict The Election Results, Based On The Characteristics Of The Candidate Face Reasoning

Trait inferences refer to a process in which observers infer actors' personality traits from their behaviors, and it is the core of impression formation. Recently, trait inferences have been widely researched in social psychology and developmental psychology and become one of the hot topics of social cognition. A large number of previous studies on trait inferences are about behaviors, however, with further research, it was gradually found that trait inferences were bound to actors' faces, which become the foundation of predicting behaviors from face-based trait inferences.People can infer others' identity, age and even personality and mental state from their faces. Recent evidence showed that face-based trait inferences can impact the decisions that people make in a variety of important domains, such as voting. However, trait inferences are an important social cognitive process with lots of cultural differences, in addition, many results about trait inferences based on candidates' faces are almost from Western research (mainly from the U.S.). Do candidates' appearance effects exist for Eastern cultures (especially in Chinese culture)? Which trait (or traits) can predict the electoral success? Now these studies are so scarce in China, and which are deserved to be explored deeply in the future, at the same time, which is also one of the innovations in this study. The study explored the relationship between faces of political candidates and election results, and the prediction power of competence trait and virtue, in which college students were as participant, E-Prime was used to present stimulus materials and record data.Based on above relevant literatures, this thesis selected some college students as subjects and used E-Prim software to present stimulus materials and record behavioral data, to explore the relationship between political candidates' faces and election outcome and the power of competence trait and virtue trait in the context of Chinese culture.The U.S. materials were borrowed from Todorov et al. (2005), Chinese stimulus materials were selected from 1998 HK Legislative Council and standardized in size. In addition, to explore impacts of Chinese culture on trait inferences of candidates, I investigated the primary trait of politicians in people's mind.A paired comparison paradigm was adopted in Study 1 and Study 2. In Study 1, single factor design (image type:U.S. vs H.K.) was adopted, and participates were asked to rely on their "gut feeling" to make hypothetical votes. Independences in Study 2 were competence and virtue traits, participates were told to make trait judgments. SPSS 19.0 was used to entry and analysis behavioral data. The results showed that:(1) The results of hypothetical votes demonstrated that participants predicted the outcomes of elections for the 2002 U.S. Senate and 1998 H.K. Legislative Council, based solely on the facial appearance of political candidates and with no prior knowledge about the person.(2) The results of an additional survey showed that competence and virtue emerged as two of the most important trait attributes on which people evaluated politicians. The results of trait judgments from faces suggested that inferences of competence based on candidates'appearances on predicting the outcomes of 2002 U.S. Senate and 1998 H.K. Legislative Council elections outcomes were mixed. Virtue trait did not express its cultural characteristic.