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Notes -
CAN YOU RECOGNIZE LEFT-WINGERS FROM RIGHT-WINGERS FROM FACE ALONE?
I've seen numerous people on Twitter etc. claim that they can indeed do this, so I've created a quiz to test this claim. This quiz has 20 Finnish MP's essentially selected randomly (I took their photos from the Parliament's webpage, organized them alphabetically using medium icons and then just removed the middle part of this collage, leaving a bit over 20 photos: after removing the Swedish People's Party members for not fitting the ideological scale that well and taking one out for wearing a party pin, I was left with exactly 20 photos). Note: pics are displayed in randomized order.
The MP's represent six parties, but all you have to do here is select: Left or Right? Those representing the parties Social Democrats, Greens and Left Alliance are Left, those representing the parties Centre, National Coalition and The Finns are Right.
I will offer one hint: you cannot use tie color/dress color (ie. politicians wearing party-color dresses and ties) to make consistently correct guesses.
12/20.
Guessed all randomly (effectively, even trying did not work). Strong prior that anyone who is saying they could notice a pattern is under some strong placebo (confirmation bias) or is working with IQ much superior to mine. As @DaseindustriesLtd already mentioned, a test like this would work in the US where you can infer from various demographic markers (even within the same race/ethnicity), and might only work in a country that is (geographically) large and ethnically stratified along political lines like the US, Brazil, India.
As of writing this post. The mean score is 11.625/20 and the standard deviation is 2.57. A binomial distribution with p = 0.5, n = 20, would have a mean = 10 and a standard deviation = 2.33. FWIW
Also, right vs. left mean different things outside of the US. Conservatism in the US is quite the opposite of the more paternalistic style of conservatism elsewhere.
Yeah, we are probably not even trying to find the same variable. If there is some kind of latent personality trait that manifests in one's face, it would probably predict libertarianism vs authoritarianism more (as per big 5 priors), which is more or less nonexistent as a consideration outside of the US.
I'm not sure libertarian vs authoritarian is really the variable that makes US conservatism/liberalism such a different divide from elsewhere in the world- both parties have things they tend to be authoritarian on and things they tend to be libertine on(although you're correct that the hyper-libertarian "get off my property and leave me alone" mentality is pretty unique to the republicans). Instead I think it's because conservative and liberal whites are ethnic groups who vote in favor of their ethnic interests and against the other's ethnic interests, largely with ideology as window dressing. That's not to say that there are no real ideological differences- abortion is obviously one, for example- but I don't think libertarian/authoritarian is a relevant axis to compare them on.
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