Money & Politics | Daily Report

Campaign photoMaldonado: baby face

Do American voters presume that a politician with a baby face is incompetent?

Do they vote for him anyway?

Three Scandinavian economists tackled these unusual electoral questions in a deadly-serious academic study published in the current number of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Perhaps their work has some resonance for the November election in California.

Authors Panu Poutvaara, of the University of Helsinki, and Henrik Jordahl and Niclas Berggren, who work for Swedish think tanks, are trying to sort out some anomalies noted in the work of American social scientists who have studied how a politician’s appearance influences vote-getting.

In a 2005 study [PDF] published in the journal Science, Princeton scholar Alexander Todorov reported that in U.S. congressional races, voters often choose candidates based simply on facial appearance: if the guy looks like he knows what’s he’s doing, he’s going to get more votes, he wrote.

Campaign photoWhitman: baby cheeks

Meanwhile, a Brandeis University psychologist has speculated that a politician with a baby face is doomed to defeat, because most voters presume baby-faced candidates are incompetent.

For the new study, the Scandinavians assembled campaign photos of 1,700 Finnish politicians and showed them to 2,700 U.S. and Swedish voters. From the photos, panelists were asked to rate the candidates for several traits, including competence and “babyfacedness,” as the authors put it.

As predicted, the panelists regarded the baby-faced politicians as incompetent.

Campaign photoBoxer: baby skin

But then another anomaly cropped up: Most of the baby-faced Finnish politicians whose photos were used in the study had managed to get elected, despite their childish looks.

This crosscurrent suggests that “babyfacedness is either unrelated or positively related to electoral success,” the authors write. They have no idea why. Perhaps more research is in order.

Campaign photoNewsom: adult chin

In the meantime, California Watch sought insight from Bay Area portrait photographer Eliot Khuner, who has taken pictures of hundreds of babies in his career.

“Baby faces have a much more exaggerated topography, although we think of them as featureless,” he said in an interview.

After reviewing a photo lineup, Khuner said only one candidate on California’s statewide ballot truly has a baby face. Abel Maldonado, the Republican lieutenant governor, has “round cheeks, full lips, round forehead, rounded nose, few distinctive facial features,” Khuner wrote in an e-mail.

Campaign photoBrown: no babyish features

Given her “sagging face, small eyes and flat forehead,” you can’t say Meg Whitman, the GOP candidate for governor, has a baby face. But Khuner said her visage includes one strong component of baby-facedness: “rounded cheeks.”

Sen. Barbara Boxer, the incumbent Democrat, also projects some baby-facedness, Khuner said: She has smooth skin. But her adult facial traits – “Flat cheeks, fake smile (and) flat forehead” – dominate, he wrote.

Campaign photoFiorina: adult visage

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Maldonado’s Democrat opponent, has one baby-faced feature: his “non-sagging face.” But his sharp nose and strong chin are all adult.

And Attorney General Jerry Brown, Democrat for governor, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, Republican for Senate, don’t have any baby-faced features at all, Khuner said.

Will voters conclude that Whitman is incompetent because of her chubby cheeks? Will they presume Brown knows what he’s doing because of his well-defined adult nose?

Will they vote for Whitman anyway?