bq. …we found that individuals’ political affiliations could be accurately discerned from their faces…perceivers were able to accurately distinguish whether U.S. Senate candidates were either Democrats or Republicans based on photos of their faces…these effects extended to Democrat and Republican college students, based on their senior yearbook photos…these judgments were related to differences in perceived traits among the Democrat and Republican faces. Republicans were perceived as more powerful than Democrats. Moreover, as individual targets were perceived to be more powerful, they were more likely to be perceived as Republicans by others. Similarly, as individual targets were perceived to be warmer, they were more likely to be perceived as Democrats.
The study, by Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady, is here (via). If I am reading their results correctly, correct perceptions of U.S. Senate candidates were better than chance, but not by much (57% correct). In the yearbook study, the percentage correct was higher, (62%). The third set of findings — about power and warmth — dovetails with Danny Hayes’ work on party ownership of traits (pdf), which the authors cite.
I think all of this is quite interesting, although we shouldn’t push the conclusions too far. It’s clear that party identification is somewhat evident from appearance, but appearance is far from a definitive clue.