Do campaign posters trigger voting based on looks? Probing an explanation for why good-looking candidates win more votes
Abstract: Numerous studies document that better-looking candidates win more votes. Yet the causal mechanisms leading to this advantage remain unexplored. We consider for the first time a potential trigger of the looks - vote association that has previously been suggested but not tested in the literature: exposure to campaign posters of the candidates. We test this explanation with German election survey data, which we augment with ratings - provided by MTurk workers from the U.S. - of the attractiveness and facial competence of about 1,000 district candidates. Confirming previous studies on Germany, we find that attractiveness is positively associated with candidate vote share (1.2 ppts. min-max). At the voter level, we find tentative evidence for the idea that the association is moderated by exposure to campaign posters: effects are in the expected directions and their sizes consistent with what we observe at the candidate level, but we cannot always reject the null hypothesis of no effect
- Sprache
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Englisch
- Umfang
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Online-Ressource
- Anmerkungen
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Veröffentlichungsversion
begutachtet (peer reviewed)
In: Acta Politica ; 56 (2020) 3 ; 416-435
- Standort
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Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
- Klassifikation
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Politik
- Urheber
- Ereignis
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Veröffentlichung
- (wo)
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Mannheim
- (wer)
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SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
- (wann)
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2020
- DOI
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10.1057/s41269-020-00159-3
- URN
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urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-74481-2
- Rechteinformation
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Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
- Letzte Aktualisierung
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25.03.2025, 13:57 MEZ
Datenpartner
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.
Beteiligte
- Herrmann, Michael
- Shikano, Susumu
- SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
Entstanden
- 2020