Facial Similarity between Voters and Candidates Causes Influence

Social science research demonstrates that people are drawn to others perceived as similar. We extend this finding to political candidates by comparing the relative effects of candidate familiarity as well as partisan, issue, gender, and facial similarity on voters’ evaluations of candidates. In Experiment 1, during the week of the 2006 Florida gubernatorial race, a national representative sample of voters viewed images of two unfamiliar...