Study: Political bias affects first impressions of peoples’ faces

A new study released this week showed Republicans and Democrats, when given hints of partisanship, don’t like the look of each other’s faces.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina found that when study participants were presented with photographs of people and told their political affiliation, the participants changed their previous views on the people in the photos.

One of the researchers, Brittany Cassidy, said the study showed “participants’ first impressions of photos of strangers’ faces were strongly influenced by disclosure of the stranger’s political partisanship.”

The researchers set out to study the details of the rise in political division in the United States. The study of 275 college students proved that “partisan biases do not only emerge when people are effortfully reasoning about politics. Our work shows that they appear in basic aspects of person perception—first impressions of faces.”

To prove this, the researchers labeled some of the photos with the correct party affiliation, some with the incorrect party affiliation, and some with none at all.

The research team hopes their work may be useful in bridging the political gap between Republicans and Democrats in the United States by becoming better educated about what forms peoples’ opinions about their political opposites.