Perceptions of Political Actors: How Appearance Impacts who we think Participates in Politics

Appearance is an expression of the self that is interpreted by others and used to infer certain personality traits, expectations, and judgements about people during social interactions. This social evaluation can differentially affect men and women’s perceived characteristics as people who appear to be visually closer to physical ideals of their respective genders may be more likely to be associated with those masculine/feminine traits. One reason previous work has found that women are more likely than men to experience self-silencing effects and general exclusion from politics may be due to male gaze effects, which creates the perception of traditional feminine traits as unfit for politics. The current paper explores how appearance perceptions of men and women inform perceived personality traits that suggest who is fit to participate in politics. In Study 1, young people ages 18-28 answered a series of questions related to their personality, attitudes, and interest in politics. This was part of a broader project using video recording which allowed for the collection of headshot photos of participations with neutral facial expressions. Study 2 shows these headshots to an online set of new participants who are asked to infer a set of traits that have been linked to politics (e.g. feminine, masculine, warmth, competency) followed by ratings of whether the person in the image might participate in politics in the future (e.g., vote, work on a campaign, run for office). The survey answers from Study 2 will then be compared to Study 1 participants’ actual responses to see if appearance perceptions match individual self-report responses. That is, can we tell if someone is interested in politics simply by their appearance? I expect that women and men who have more masculine appearances will be perceived as more interested in politics, regardless of the people in the photos’ actual level of reported political interest. The results of this study will inform how people see fellow citizens as political actors and how these perceptions create social advantages or barriers for some groups over others.