A recent study has revealed that people may prefer the looks those candidates in the political office who represent same political party as theirs.
Kevin M. Kniffin, a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell's Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, showed pictures of familiar and unfamiliar political leaders to voters in two different samples and found that familiarity and partisanship each significantly influenced how candidates were perceived.
The researcher said that Democrats rated Barack Obama as more physically attractive and Republicans tended to rate Sarah Palin as better looking and that in such a case the participant were viewing the candidates in "through partisan-colored lenses.'
When the researchers effectively removed the partisan-colored lenses by asking study participants to view unlabeled pictures of unfamiliar political leaders from distant states, the results for those unfamiliar candidates showed no favoritism based on political affiliation.
The study suggested that if one doesn't recognize political leaders and can't view them through the lens that can show their political affiliation, they can't effect perceptions.
The study was published in The Leadership Quarterly.
