In August of 2007, a team of researchers in Australia did an experiment. They took a group of schoolgirls and showed them photographs of the United States presidential candidates. If the schoolgirls recognized any of the candidates, they were disqualified from the experiment.
Those who were completely ignorant of who they were looking at, were asked who they thought were the most competent.
That’s one good looking couple. Let’s make them president.
In the end, the researchers obtained between 139 and 348 ratings for each contender.
And the results were fascinating.
The Democrats were rated as more competent than the Republican field.
At 7.2 out of a possible 10, Hillary Clinton had the highest rating of any of the contenders.
Among those who are still in contention, Barack Obama was second at 6.8.
The highest ranking Republican was John McCain at 6.2 with Mitt Romney on 6.1 and Mike Huckabee on 5.3.
On the basis of appearances alone, then, the researchers predict a Clinton-McCain contest with a Clinton win.
This was done in August of 2007. Back then, Giuliani and Thompson were kicking McCain up and down the polls. The researchers had a hypothesis, and the campaign evolved exactly like the researchers thought:
Essentially the research team hypothesized that the polls would move closer to the facial competence rankings as more voters found out what the candidates looked like - and so it has happened,†Prof Wight said.
“I suppose the take home message for voters is that what you see is not necessarily what you get – it may be efficient for people to choose a president on the basis of snap judgments but that is obviously no real indication of their leadership qualities – as far as we know there is no relationship between looking competent and the real thing.
Voters really need to read the policies.
Right now, the only way to get the American public interested in the presidential campaign is to turn it into a reality series. Voters read the policies…please.
