[olug] OT: evil poll

[Will Langford]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 5:21 PM, Jennifer Frasier
<wookieburgers at gmail.com>wrote:

> Obama. I've been decided since he announced he was running. Even though I
> like Dennis Kucinich better, I'm well aware he can't be considered a
> serious
> candidate.
>
> In my Psychology class, I read that they did a study on people to see if
> they could determine the outcome of a political race from just looking at
> pictures of the candidates. They used pictures of candidates from races the
> test subjects could not possibly have known the outcome of (critical
> thinking begs the question of how they determined that). I wish I still had
> my Pyschology book so I could tell you the exact findings, but I remember
> that I was shocked by the amount of instances in which the subjects picked
> the correct candidate. So for all the talk of issues, voting records, etc,
> it still all just comes down to looks.
>

History channel recently did a "Secrets of Body Language" show.  While it
wasn't nearly as narly as it could have been, they did have a section that
relates to what you're discussing.

They gave some students a bunch of pictures and asked them to make snap
judgements and such.  The pictures were of two candidates for various races
over the years.  I believe the students had a 70% coincidence with  the
winner :).

The show, in general, was workable/interesting to a degree.  Perhaps I'll
convert the f'er for anyone wanting a watch.  I was 24 hrs from blowing $400
on a 22" LCD monitor and parts for a htpc (case, mobo, memory, cpu)... but
took a look at a credit card and said 'not this week' heh :(... so the files
are in DVRMS format and need to be passed through a quick util to convert
:).

-Will