Subjects were shown photographs of UK MPs' faces and asked to judge their political affiliations. Participants were unable to correctly distinguish between Conservative and Labour politicians. However, their responses were used to create computer-generated idealised faces representative of each party, which independent evaluators could correctly identify. These faces give an indication of the mental images we might reference when imagining MPs from the two main UK political parties.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BerishaFJohnstonAMcOwanP W, 2010“Identifying regions that carry the best information about global face configurations”Journal of Vision10(11):27, 1–8
KanaiRFeildenTFirthCReesG, 2011“Political orientations are correlated with brain structure in young adults”Current Biology21677–680
4.
RuleN OAmbadyN, 2010“Democrats and Republicans can be differentiated from their faces”PLoS One5 1 e8733
5.
RuleN OAmbadyNHallettK C, 2009“Female sexual orientation is perceived accurately rapidly and automatically from the face and its features”Journal of the Experimental Society of Psychology451245–1251
6.
ValentineT, 1991“A unified account of the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race in face recognition”Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Experimental Psychology A43161–204
