Summary: People with wider faces tend to be seen as more dominant and as having stronger leadership qualities than those with narrower faces. This effect is especially pronounced for men, whose wider faces were also judged as more electable. Political orientation alters these perceptions: conservatives showed a stronger bias against women’s faces and were less likely to view a woman with a wider face as dominant or electable, while liberals were generally more willing to vote for women but still did not perceive women with wider faces as more dominant than men.
Source: University of Toronto
A new study from U of T Scarborough shows that liberals and conservatives interpret facial cues of dominance in women differently, a difference that may influence voters’ choices in political contests.
“We found that conservatives and liberals read dominance signals differently in the faces of men and women,” says Pankaj Aggarwal, professor of marketing in the department of management at U of T Scarborough.
Aggarwal and co-author Ahreum Maeng, an associate professor at the University of Kansas, used the facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) as a measurable cue of perceived dominance. In general, a higher width-to-height ratio—i.e., a relatively wider face—is interpreted as a signal of greater dominance and leadership potential compared with a narrower face.
Across a series of controlled experiments, participants viewed images of male and female faces and rated perceived dominance and electability. The researchers consistently observed that wider faces in men were judged as more dominant and more electable. The same pattern did not emerge for women: wider female faces were not perceived as more dominant to the same extent, and this influenced judgments about political suitability.
Political orientation shapes how facial cues are weighed
One study presented faces of hypothetical political candidates to self-identified conservatives and liberals and asked participants to assess each candidate’s likelihood of winning an election. Men with wider faces were rated higher on dominance and electability, but women with wider faces did not receive the same boost.
Conservatives showed a stronger bias against female faces: they were less likely to view women with wider faces as dominant and therefore less likely to consider them electable. Liberals, while more open to voting for female candidates overall, similarly did not interpret wider female faces as signaling greater dominance. In other words, both groups read facial width as a dominance cue more readily in men than in women, but conservatives were more influenced by these gendered perceptions when making voting judgments.
“While there is a gender stereotype effect that does kick in for liberals, it isn’t as strong, and on average they were more likely to elect women and think of women as leaders,” explains Aggarwal.
Aggarwal suggests that underlying ideological differences help explain these results. Conservatives may be more inclined to maintain traditional social hierarchies, which can reinforce gendered expectations about dominance. Liberals may actively strive to counteract hierarchical biases, making them more receptive to women as leaders despite persistent perceptual patterns.
The authors point to evolutionary psychology as one possible explanation for why wider faces are associated with dominance. Historically, social roles in many societies conferred leadership and dominance to men through more aggressive behavior, and human perception may still be attuned to facial cues that signaled competitive capacity. Over time, cultural stereotypes have reinforced associations of men with dominance and of women with nurturing or submissive roles, which can shape snap judgments about leadership potential.
The research highlights a subtle but potentially powerful barrier to gender parity in leadership and politics: the way voters unconsciously interpret facial cues. Even when people intend to be fair and egalitarian, ingrained perceptual biases can shape decisions about who is suited for leadership roles.
Aggarwal stresses the importance of awareness. He advises that campaign teams, selection committees and voters themselves should recognize these unconscious influences and guard against letting facial impressions override substantive evaluations of competence and policy positions. Increasing awareness, encouraging deliberative decision-making, and evaluating candidates on objective criteria may help reduce the impact of such perceptual biases.
The study will appear in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research and raises practical questions about how to mitigate bias in political selection processes. While gender equality has progressed in many areas, the nomination and election of women leaders still lags in many contexts; perceptual biases based on facial cues may be one contributing factor among others.
About this psychology and facial perception research news
Author: Don Campbell
Source: University of Toronto
Contact: Don Campbell – University of Toronto
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Closed access. “The Face of Political Beliefs: Why Gender Matters for Electability” by Pankaj Aggarwal et al., Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. (Available by journal publication)