Colleen M. Carpinella

Early Processing of Gendered Facial Cues Predicts the Electoral Success of Female Politicians

This research examined how the typicality of gender cues in politicians’ faces related to their electoral success. Previous research has shown that faces with subtle gender-atypical cues elicit cognitive competition between male and female categories, which perceivers resolve during face perception. To assess whether this competition adversely impacted politicians’ electoral success, participants categorized the gender of politicians’ faces in a hand-tracking paradigm. Gender-category competition was indexed by the hand’s attraction to the incorrect gender response. Greater gender-category competition predicted a decreased likelihood of votes, but only for female politicians. Time-course analyses revealed that this outcome was evident as early as 380 ms following face presentation (Study 1). Results were replicated with a national sample, and effects became more pronounced as the conservatism of the constituency increased (Study 2). Thus, gender categorization dynamics during the initial milliseconds after viewing a female politician’s face are predictive of her electoral success, especially in more conservative areas.

Gendered Facial Cues Influence Race Categorizations

Race and gender categories, although long presumed to be perceived independently, are inextricably tethered in social perception due in part to natural confounding of phenotypic cues. We predicted that target gender would affect race categorizations. Consistent with this hypothesis, feminine faces compelled White categorizations, and masculine faces compelled Asian or Black categorizations of racially ambiguous targets (Study 1), monoracial targets (Study 2), and real facial photographs (Study 3). The efficiency of judgments varied concomitantly. White categorizations were rendered more rapidly for feminine, relative to masculine faces, but the opposite was true for Asian and Black categorizations (Studies 1-3). Moreover, the effect of gender on categorization efficiency was compelled by racial phenotypicality for Black targets (Study 3). Finally, when targets’ race prototypicality was held constant, gender still influenced race categorizations (Study 4). These findings indicate that race categorizations are biased by presumably unrelated gender cues.

The Gendered Face of Partisan Politics: Consequences of Facial Sex Typicality for Vote Choice

Facial cues are consequential for voters’ behavior at the polls. Yet the facial cues that are associated with vote choice remain under-examined. We predicted that vote choice judgments rely, in part, on the sex typicality of facial cues (i.e., the degree of facial masculinity and femininity) that vary as a function of candidate gender and partisan identification. Stimuli included image pairs of winners and runners-up in the elections for the 111th U.S. House of Representatives. In Study 1, we found that female Republican candidates who appeared relatively more feminine and male Republican candidates who looked relatively less masculine in their appearance were more likely to win their election. Democratic candidates’ electoral success was not related to their sex typicality. In Study 2, we found that relatively masculine-appearing Democrats and feminine-appearing Republicans were more likely to be selected in a hypothetical vote choice task. Implications for U.S. partisan politics are discussed.

The Role of Diversity Exposure in Whites’ Reduction in Race Essentialism Over Time:

Despite multidisciplinary theorizing on the consequences of the changing racial demographics in the United States, few studies have systematically examined how exposure to racial diversity may impact White individuals’ lay beliefs about race. In a longitudinal study, we explored whether living in a racially diverse environment with a high multiracial population was related to White individuals’ endorsement of race essentialism and its downstream consequences. Endorsement of race essentialism decreased over time, and greater diversity of acquaintances over time was associated with this decrease. Race essentialism reduction also corresponded with a decrease in modern racism and social dominance orientation, and an increase in cognitive flexibility, over time. These findings are consistent with the idea that a racially diverse social context can shape endorsement of race essentialism and lead to social and cognitive benefits for White individuals.

Visual Information and Candidate Evaluations: The Influence of Feminine and Masculine Images on Support for Female Candidates:

Existing research debates the extent to which feminine and masculine stereotypes affect voters’ impressions of female candidates. Current approaches identify how descriptions of female candidates as having feminine or masculine qualities lead voters to rely on stereotypes. We argue that extant scholarship overlooks a critical source of stereotypic information about female candidates—the role of visual information. This manuscript explores the conditions under which voters use feminine and masculine visuals to evaluate female candidates. Drawing on theories of information processing and stereotype reliance, we develop a framework that explains when visual information will affect how voters evaluate female and male candidates. We argue that visual information that is incongruent with stereotypes about a candidate’s sex will affect candidate evaluations while visuals congruent with stereotypes about candidate sex will not. We test these dynamics with an original survey experiment. We find that gender incongruent masculine visuals negatively affect evaluations of a female candidate’s issue competencies and electoral viability.