Reminder for Barangay Officials: It's Your Face

Voters can judge a politician's competence in the blink of an eye—or so they think they can, a new study suggests. Previous research hints that voters go for the most competent candidates, but the new analysis reveals people can forge steadfast opinions simply by glancing at a candidate's picture. The study highlights some of the shallow behaviors of a sizeable chunk of the voting population, said co-author Alexander Todorov, a psychologist at Princeton University. "People are looking for the right information about a candidate, they're just looking in the wrong place," Todorov said. "We're seeing that snap judgments play a bigger role in voting than we thought." The study's findings are detailed in the Oct. 22 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.