by John Whitaker, NEE
Science Confirms: Conservatives are More Attractive than Liberals
Researchers at Illinois State University have finally answered the age old question: who’s more attractive, conservatives or liberals?
The answer? Conservatives are, on average, more attractive.
As per the study’s abstract:
Utilizing measures of attractiveness across multiple surveys, we examine the relationship between attractiveness and political beliefs. Controlling for socioeconomic status, we find that more attractive individuals are more likely to report higher levels of political efficacy, identify as conservative, and identify as Republican. These findings suggest an additional mechanism for political socialization that has further implications for understanding how the body intertwines with the social nature of politics.
The study thoroughly goes over the effect attractiveness has on success in life, especially during childhood, and I sincerely recommend that you read it.
Likewise, you should familiarize yourself with the literature which shows how physically weak men are attracted to socialism.
The researchers looked at two data sets to increase the robustness of their findings. They looked at the 1972-74-76 American National Elections Studies panel study and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. They began by analyzing the relationship between attractiveness and political efficacy, and then assessed the likelihood of each group self-identifying as Republican or Democrat.
If you ever wondered who are the more attractive bunch, here’s just a few passages from the results:
Physically attractive people would seem to not only have an easier time navigating the social world but feel more efficacious in the political world as well.
… However, the effect of attractive- ness on ideology is significant and in the hypothesized direction in the final wave of the panel; more attractive individuals are more likely to identify as conservatives. Our findings for partisanship are more robust with attractiveness consistently influencing partisanship in the expected direction across all waves. More attractive individuals are more likely to identify as Republicans, rather than Democrats…
To the authors’ credit, they specified a caveat in their study by speculating that this may be different in today’s political climate, and that the data might only be representative of the time.
Yet we have concerns that these effects may be tied to a unique period of time, or they may simply be an artifact of interviewer biases. While the era being exam- ined was far from unrepresentative of the quintessential American political experience, many would claim that politics has changed greatly since the 1970s. As robust- ness checks, we test for attractiveness effects using an additional, more recent dataset while also examining the effects of varied measures of attractiveness.
The authors also acknowledge that although these results cannot be applied universally, there is some linkage between conservatism and attractiveness.
Recent research suggests that conservative-leaning candidates in the United States and Europe are more physically attractive on average than their left-leaning counterparts, which under some conditions leads to an electoral advantage.
And this theory does have some pragmatic indicators of veracity, as we know weak men tend to prefer socialism. Since strong men are generally more attractive, this does provide some corroborating evidence to the theory that conservatives are more attractive. Obviously the only answer is to research this question in depth using a multi-factorial longitudinal study, as this question really is of great importance.
But I think we all know the answer:
