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Leading or Cheer-Leading? The Gender Gap in Political Smiles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2020

Sejin Koo
Sejin Koo*
Affiliation:
Inha University
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Abstract

In contrast to men, women are often assumed to bear the burden of making others feel comfortable through positive emotional displays such as smiling. However, in the literature, the empirical evidence for the relevance of gender stereotypes in explaining electoral outcomes remains inconclusive. By focusing on gender stereotypes regarding facial emotional displays, this study addresses the gendered consequence of candidates’ smiling on their electoral fortunes. I analyze the results of the 2014 Korean local elections and measure candidate smiles on campaign posters by employing a biometric artificial intelligence application detecting facial emotions in images. The results demonstrate that the smiling effect has a powerful positive impact on the electoral performance of women candidates running in a multicandidate race. The positive effect is limited for women running in two-candidate races and for male candidates regardless of the number of competitors. The findings suggest that voters use intuitive cues such as candidate facial displays in electoral posters when choosing among multiple candidates in low-information settings. This study contributes to a better understanding of the activation of gender stereotypes in the electoral process.

Keywords

Gender stereotypeslow-information electionssmilesfacial emotional expressionsinformation costs
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 183 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association.

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Footnotes

I thank Dr. Loretta O'Donnell and the Consortium of Gender Scholars at Nazarbayev University for their passionate and insightful encouragement. Their support enabled me to begin this research. I am also grateful to Dr. Bon-Sang Koo and anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions. This work was supported by an Inha University Research Grant.

References

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