The study, which was titled Appearance-based politics: Sex-typed facial cues communicate political party affiliation, will be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
The researchers used FaceGen, a computer program, which measures over 100 facial features such as jaw shape, eyebrow location, lip fullness, and forehead contour. It then categorizes these features on a scale of being least gender-typical through most gender typical.
Johnson and Carpinella asked college students participating in the study to evaluate the faces of the members of the 111th House of Representatives against typical facial characteristics of the male and female genders. The researchers asked them to guess each representative's political party based on their congressional portraits.
The participants rated Republican women to be more "extremely feminine" and "sex-typical" than Democratic women. The study concluded:
"When the undergraduates guessed that a politician was
Republican, their judgments were 98 percent more likely to be accurate
for women with the highest rankings for femininity; the accuracy of
their judgments increased the more feminine the politician's face. When
the undergraduates guessed that a politician was Democrat, their
judgments were 58 percent less likely to be accurate for more
feminine-looking women, and the accuracy of their judgments decreased
the more feminine the politician's face."
Among the most feminine Republican representatives were Kay Granger (Texas), Cathy Rodgers McMorris (Washington), and Michele Bachmann (Minnesota). The least feminine Democratic representatives were Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (South Dakota), Rosa DeLauro (Connecticut), and Anna G. Eshoo (California).
So GOP Congresswomen look twice as lady-like as Democratic Congresswomen?
It appears so. The correlation was also directly related to voting records of the female representatives as those who voted more conservatively had more sex-typical faces.
So is being more feminine-looking a good thing for women?
Not necessarily.
According to Johnson, in order for female candidates to be electable, they must match party ideology and physiology. This creates a double-bind for conservative women who must look sex-typical and meet traditional gender views. On the other hand, it looks as Democratic women have more leeway as they need not look traditionally feminine in order to be elected. "These policy platforms are manifest in each party's image - apparently also in the physical characteristics exhibited by politicians," said Johnson.
Furthermore, another study shows that women who exhibit "feminine" characteristics in the workplace are perceived as less competent. It found that traits deemed to be masculine indicate competence whereas traits deemed feminine show expressiveness and warmth.
So do these studies give credence to the idea that we have to look like a lady and act like a man in order to be successful in the workplace? SBW hopes not.
Decide for yourself.
