TITLE:
Automatic Evaluation of Faces Predict Mayor Election Outcomes in Brazil
AUTHORS:
Sergio Da Silva, Joao Felipe de Novais
KEYWORDS:
Voting Behavior, Automatic Face Evaluation, Election Outcomes, Nonverbal Behavior, Field Experiment
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.4 No.1,
January
5,
2017
ABSTRACT: Elections can be decided on the basis of automatic evaluations of a candidate’s face that take less than one second. These inferences are specific to competence and they could predict better than chance 68.8 percent of the US Senate race results in 2004. Such a finding suggests fast, unreflective trait inferences can contribute to voting choices. We replicated this finding for the 2012 and 2016 municipal elections that took place in the southern Brazil state of Santa Catarina. Mayors could have been elected partially by automatic perceptions of competence.