There is no image, and I mean NO image, more emotionally charged than the human face. Trying to assign any specific objective qualities, let alone things as high-minded as political persuasions, based on facial features is not only pointless, inaccurate, and childish, its almost akin to what the Nazis did with their propaganda. Pointing out features like big noses, dark oily hair, or large foreheads.
As Smithers said to Mr. Burns, “Phrenology was dismissed as quackery 160 years ago…”
If you continue writing in this thread it means you probably have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter! (or a whiny liberal!)
One thing I’d say is that I generally agree with what Matt Taibbi says in his excellent and hilarious book, “Spanking the Donkey.” After attending a number of liberal and conservative events, he says that one thing he always notices: conservatives are always clean-shaven (i.e. no 3 day growth), have well-groomed hair, and are tidy in appearance. I’m not sure about the clothes part.
Though I am sympathetic to liberal politics, I don’t have a political agenda. I wanted to know if my gut reaction to seeing a guy and thinking he was conservative may be more than just a learned response, and whether it had any basis in genetics. Far from trying to “assign” qualities, I’m actually trying to establish correlation. I’m thinking here of conservatism/liberalism as being an outcome variable of some unknown process that may cause other outcomes like certain facial features. I don’t see how it’s any different than saying that bald people are more likely to have heart disease.
How about a test? I could present you with pictures of a selection of Canadian MPs and you could try to sort them into Liberals and Conservatives and see if you can do better than random. How well do you think you’d do?
Actually, if you read the study puddleglum linked to, it suggests the exact OPPOSITE of what you and he seem to think it says.
That is, the study (of identical and fraternal twins) found a statistically significant correlation between genetic kinship and strength of ideological partisanship. It did not find any significant heritability of direction of ideological partisanship:
So your genes may influence how strong your preference is for your political party, but they have no significant influence on which political party you prefer.
I wouldn’t say that it says the opposite; more like it says something different. But still, the different thing that it says could possible lend some credence to what I’m conjecturing-- namely that genetics might play some role in expression of political ideology. Something that explains 46% of something else is not something you can easily write off.
Uh, no. It says right there in the part that I quoted:
Emphasis added. It is clear that this study did not only find results on a different topic from the one you’re interested in. It also found results that directly contradict your speculative hypothesis about the topic you’re interested in.
You may still choose to believe that genetics (as expressed in, e.g., phenotypic differences) are significantly linked to one’s choice of party. And certainly, the last word on the subject hasn’t been said. But the study that we’re talking about does not in fact provide any support for your speculation: in fact, it directly contradicts it.
This would be more believeable if the qualities you were observing were “tall and thin” or “left hand larger than right” or “long ear lobes” – actually, any quality that’s objectively physical, as opposed to the subjectively pejorative ones you chose. His eyes are “weirdly vacant.” His hair is “molded.” He has a “curled upper lip” – a common literary descriptor of the elitist, snobbish, or supercilious.
Your own OP belies your protestations of a lack of bias.
Personally, I’d love to try a test like that. Since I’m American and woefully ignorant of Canadian politicians, I would have literally no idea of part affiliation. I wonder how I’d do in predicting political leanings based solely on appearance.
Oops, sorry-- I missed that part somehow. Thanks for pointing it out!
Oh shit you figured out my secret. :rolleyes:
Listen, I said that I did not have a political agenda in my question; I didn’t say I wasn’t biased against conservatives. In fact, I did say I was biased when I said I was partial to liberal politics. I even suggested it in my OP where I described my impression of the guy as based on [obviously negative] stereotypes. So tell me now-- what possible political agenda could I have in ascertaining a connection between genetics and political persuasion?
Assuming that political orientation has some genetic component (which it is important to note the above study seems to dismiss), I think it is unlikely that political orientation would be driven 100% by genetics; therefore, if someone switches parties, I doubt their lip would straighten out.
Very well, then. I have compiled the official portrait photographs of 25 sitting Members of Parliament. 10 Conservatives, 10 Liberals, and 5 NDP. The NDP are politically to the left of the Liberals. For the purposes of the test, you can feel free to lump them in with the Liberals, which means you’d aim for 10 con and 15 lib. I’ve left Bloc Quebecois MPs out entirely as they don’t map onto a conservative/liberal continuum very well.
The MPs were chosen by going to the Parliamentary website’s list of sitting members, ordering it by party (so I could skip the Bloc), and then rolling a pair of dice and moving that far down the list. I then cherry-picked a bit to balance the gender distribution for a couple parties. Couldn’t have the NDP represented ONLY by stodgy old white guys. And finally I more or less randomly ditched some Tories and a few Liberals to get to my nice round numbers.
Anyways, I think that at least in the US, there might be some correlation between faces and political leaning simply because political leaning is not uniformly represented among all ethnicities, social class, regions, etc.
And without having seen the link upthread, of course that people are more likely to be of the same political affiliation that their parents (says my wag glands). This would mean some level of “heredity” on political affiliation.
ETA: Rereading the post, I just noticed I got the numbers wrong. I wasn’t shooting for any numbers and just deciding Lib or Con and ended up with 15 Con and 10 Lib. Oh well. Ammo for the no link crowd.
My answers (curiously, I got an almost even number of each - 13 liberals and 12 conservatives):
1. L
2. C
3. L
4. L
5. C
6. L
7. L
8. C
9. C
10. C
11. L
12. C
13. L
14. C
15. L
16. L
17. L
18. L
19. C
20. C
21. L
22. C
23. C
24. L
25. C
ETA: Sapo and I used the same answer 16 times, or just over 50% of the time. Looking at the pictures again, I think I may have weighted gender and age too heavily rather than gender and ethnicity.
