Public likely to vote for good looking politicians

LONDON - Researchers have found that the public are more likely to vote for good looking politicians.

According to a report in The Telegraph, many voters are lured to certain candidates by their looks, no matter how shallow that may sound.

Scientists conducted a large scale experiment using photos of almost 2,000 political candidates and more than 10,000 members of the public.

Both men and women favoured those they found more attractive, according to the study published in the Journal of Public Economics.

The research said the more attractive a candidate the more they were seen as trustworthy, intelligent, likeable and able.

However, the report authors observe that this does not always mean only beautiful people get elected.

But in many local elections, for instance, the public may never see or hear their representative in the flesh so often only have electoral literature to go on.

Simply given a photograph to look at, people do vote for beauty and associate it with other qualities.

A selection from 1,992 photos of political candidates in Finland were shown to each of 10,011 people including 6,303 from outside Finland itself.

This meant that most of those taking part would have no clue about the political persuasion or personality of those they were looking at.

They were asked to rate them for attractiveness and then for other qualities associated with standing for public office.

Our main result is that beauty seems to help.” Attractive people are seen as more successful in general, said the study. (ANI)