Every now and then, I go beyond sports and do some work related to politics. I think it’s a natural extension because, just like sports, political campaigns are contests between human competitors. In this addition of the podcast, Ada Chong and I discuss the role of appearance in political campaigns.
It’s an interesting topic that should be of interest to voters and campaigns. There has long been a theory that attractiveness and generally looking more competent provide a benefit to candidates. We take this idea to the next level and look at the role of appearance across political parties. This is an important extension because the Republican and Democratic parties are very different brands that appeal to increasingly different constituencies.
In this episode we discuss a research paper I wrote with Dr. Joey Hoegg from the University of British Columbia. The paper investigated how inferences about personality based appearance influence campaign results. One of the topics we discuss is the role of appearing “intelligent” versus looking “competent”. We found that Democratic candidates gained an advantage from having more academic or intellectual types of appearances while Republicans benefited from having appearances that suggested more practical types of competence.
For those that are truly interested the abstract and citation for the research are below.
The Abstract
Spending on political advertising has grown dramatically in recent years, and political campaigns have increasingly adopted the language and techniques of marketing. As such political marketing efforts proliferate, the factors that drive electoral success warrant greater attention and investigation. The authors employ a combination of laboratory studies and analysis of actual election results to reveal influences of candidate appearance and spending strategies in campaigns. They analyze how personality trait inferences based on candidate appearance interact with political party brand image, advertising spending, and negative advertising. The results indicate that appearance-based inferences about candidates influence election outcomes, but their impact is driven partially by trait associations at the party brand level. This interaction between appearance and party alters the effects of advertising spending, particularly the effects of negative advertising. The findings have implications for the marketing of political candidates in terms of their party’s brand image.
The Citation
Hoegg, Joandrea, and Michael V. Lewis. “The impact of candidate appearance and advertising strategies on election results.” Journal of Marketing Research 48, no. 5 (2011): 895-909.
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