Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [87]
Indirect evidence was provided by studies on political candidates. In many cases, the candidate is the spokesperson as well as the product. In one study, 31 subjects saw pictures of candidates just prior to the 2004 U.S. Senate race. Based on one-second exposures, the subjects rated each candidate’s competence (subjects who recognized a candidate were excluded). The most competent-looking candidates won 69 percent of the 32 races. Similar results were obtained in studies of candidates for the 2004 U.S. House of Representatives elections, and for the 2000 and 2002 U.S. House and Senate elections (Todorov et al. 2005).
Subjects in Switzerland were asked to rate 57 pairs of black and white photos of faces of candidates in the 2002 French parliamentary election (none of the subjects recognized the candidates). In their first experiment, each of 684 university students rated 12 of the pairs of candidates for competency; the candidates with the highest average competency ratings won in 72 percent of the elections. In their second experiment, the researchers tested Plato’s observation by presenting 2,814 subjects with a pair of photos for a computer-simulated trip from Troy to Ithaca. The photos were those candidates from the French election. Their selections of “captains” matched the winners 72 percent of the time. The findings were the same for adults as for children (Antonakis and Dalgas 2009).
Here is further evidence on facial appearance. Ratings of facial competency were obtained for 11 Democratic and 13 Republican candidates for the 2008 U.S. presidential election about 15 months prior to the election. The ratings were snap judgments by people who scanned photos of all of the candidates. Young subjects from New Zealand and Australia were used to help ensure that they did not recognize the candidates. The number of raters varied from 139 (Hillary Clinton was widely recognized) to 348 (Tom Tancredo was not recognized). Their average judgments were used to forecast the winners of the popular vote. Clinton was judged to be the most competent Democrat (slightly ahead of Obama), and by some counts she won the popular vote. McCain was judged most competent of the Republicans, and at the time of the facial ratings, the political polls had him at 15 percent—substantially behind Giuliani and Thompson, who were rated low on facial competency. Thus, these early ratings provided much better forecasts than the polls and the prediction markets. Finally, Obama was judged to be substantially more competent looking than McCain (Armstrong et al. 2010).
About smiling: An experiment using Chinese subjects found that people in photographs were judged as warmer and more intelligent when they were smiling than when they were not (Lau 1982). In another study, subjects were more cooperative with strangers when, prior to a brief interaction, they saw a photo of the stranger smiling than when they saw a photo in which the stranger had a more serious expression (Scharlemann et al. 2001).
Our analysis of quasi-experimental data supports this principle with respect to facial expressions:
Print ads with satisfied facial expressions produced better recall. In our WAPB analysis, we found 14 pairs of ads in which one ad had a spokesperson or endorser with a satisfied expression, while the facial expression in the other ad was not looking as satisfied. Recall of ads with satisfied facial expressions was 1.21 times better than for the other ads.
5.6.3. Use a trustworthy and credible spokesperson
A little rebellion now and then … is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
Vladimir Lenin
This quote on “rebellion” could be easily dismissed given the source’s lack of credibility. However, if people are told that that the author was Thomas Jefferson