Replication Data for: Should Candidates Smile to Win Elections? An Application of Automated Face Recognition Technology

Previous studies examining whether the faces of candidates affect election outcomes commonly measure study participants' subjective judgment of various characteristics of candidates, which participants infer based solely on the photographic images of candidates. We, instead, develop a smile index of such images objectively with automated face-recognition technology. The advantage of applying this new technology is that the automated process of measuring facial traits is by design independent of voters' subjective evaluations of candidate attributes, based on the images, and thus allows us to estimate “undiluted” effects of facial appearance per se on election outcomes. The results of regression analysis using Japanese and Australian data show that the smile index has statistically significant and substantial effects on the vote share of candidates even after controlling for other covariates.

既往有关候选人面容是否影响选举结果的研究，通常会让研究参与者仅依据候选人的肖像照片，对候选人的多项特征作出主观推断与评价。与之相对，本研究借助自动人脸识别技术，针对这类照片客观构建了笑容指数。该新技术的应用优势在于，面部特征的自动化测量流程在设计层面独立于选民基于图像对候选人属性作出的主观评价，从而使我们能够估算面部外观本身对选举结果的「未受稀释」效应。基于日本与澳大利亚两国选举数据开展的回归分析结果表明，即便在控制其他协变量的前提下，笑容指数仍对候选人得票率具有统计学意义上的显著且实质性影响。