Snap judgments about candidates are the best way to pick winners, study suggests

People watching short clips of silent debate footage are able to predict political election winners more accurately than predictions based on reports of economic conditions, finds a study supported by Dartmouth, the University of Chicago, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (ISR).

"We found that snap decisions based on charisma are a good predictor of election outcomes," says Daniel J. Benjamin, an assistant professor of economics at Dartmouth and a fellow at ISR. "But you need to measure charisma with silent video clips rather than sound-on clips because knowing about candidate policy positions disrupts people's ability to judge the non-verbal cues that really matter." Benjamin was a co-author of this study with Jesse M. Shapiro of the University of Chicago.

After watching ten-second silent video clips of competing gubernatorial candidates, participants in the study were able to pick the winning candidate at a rate significantly better than chance. When the sound was turned on and participants could hear what the candidates were saying, they were no better than chance at predicting the winner. For the study, Benjamin and Shapiro showed 264 participants, virtually all Harvard undergraduates, ten-second video clips of the major party candidates in 58 gubernatorial elections from 1988 to 2002.

Researchers found that the accuracy of predictions based solely on silent video clips was about the same as or greater than the accuracy of predictions based on knowledge of which candidate was the incumbent and information about the prevailing economic conditions at the time of the election, including the unemployment rate and any changes in personal income for the year prior to the election.

"The basic finding that adding policy information to visual information about candidates actually worsens voter judgment has some important implications," says Benjamin. "It may help to explain, for example, why expert forecasters, who are highly informed about and attentive to policy matters, have been found to perform no better than chance in predicting elections."

The findings also underscore the importance of charisma as distinct from policy positions or party affiliations in winning elections.

"It may be difficult to describe the factors that determine a politician's charisma," says Benjamin. "But it can be measured by how people react to a politician in the absence of information about policy positions. Our study clearly shows that reactions to even small amounts of visual information are highly informative about charisma."

The research was funded by the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and by KNP Communications, a political consulting firm that used the findings to develop a tool called the Virtual Primary(™) to help political organizations and donors predict at the beginning of the campaign which candidates would be successful in the end.

Source: Dartmouth College

Related stories:

Lessig Calls for Freely Available Debate Footage
Despite grave concerns about the current state of copyright and free speech on the democratic process, Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig says he has reason to be optimistic for the future.
Japan cautious in iPhone's bid for world dominance
(AP) -- Kentaro Tohyama is proud of his new iPhone. He stood overnight in line to get it when the device became available in Japan for the first time. But the 29-year-old computer engineer isn't about to part with his made-in-Japan cell phone either.
YouTube, Viacom agree to mask viewer data
(AP) -- In a nod to privacy complaints, Viacom Inc. won't be told the identities of individuals who watch video clips on the popular video-sharing site YouTube.
Privacy protections disappear with a judge's order
(AP) -- Credit card companies know what you've bought. Phone companies know whom you've called. Electronic toll services know where you've gone. Internet search companies know what you've sought.
Fujitsu Develops New Technology that Ensures Authenticity of Digital Video Clips
Fujitsu Laboratories announced today the development of the world's first technology that makes it possible to ensure that digital video data recorded over long time periods and then stored and managed in segments, or clips extracted from the video, are actual parts of the original video and that the segments have not been falsely manipulated, while at the same verifying the time that the video data was recorded.
PopTok lets movie snippets do the talking in online messaging
Israeli startup PopTok on Monday began inviting people to test a free service that weaves snippets from memorable films or hot music videos into instant messages and email.
Electromagnetic interference from some identification devices may pose hazards to medical equipment
The use of radio frequency identification devices appears to have the potential to cause critical care medical equipment to malfunction, according to a study in the June 25 issue of JAMA.
Researchers find drugs being tested for Alzheimer's disease work in unexpected and beneficial ways
Researchers at Mayo Clinic, with their national and international collaborators, have discovered how a class of agents now in testing to treat Alzheimer's disease work, and say they may open up an avenue of drug discovery for this disease and others.

News discussion:

General Science news