Perception and Judgment Lab

This database contains 248 photos of US Governor candidates and 302 photos of US Senator candidates used in our research (Ballew & Todorov, 2007; Olivola & Todorov, 2010; Olivola et al., 2012; Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005). The database also contains the candidates’ perceived competence measured in a forced choice competence judgement task by participants unfamiliar with the politicians. As such, these ratings simply indicate perceptions and are in no way indicative of the actual competence of the politicians. Exact methods are described in the above papers.

If you use photos of Governor candidates, you should cite Ballew & Todorov (2007), and Olivola & Todorov (2010). The exact references are:

Ballew, C. C., and Todorov, A. (2007). Predicting political elections from rapid and unreflective face judgments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 104(46), 17948-17953.

Olivola, C. Y., and Todorov, A. (2010). Elected in 100 milliseconds: Appearance-based trait inferences and voting. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 34, 83-110.

If you use photos of Senator candidates, you should cite Olivola & Todorov (2010) and Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall (2005). The exact references are:

Olivola, C. Y., and Todorov, A. (2010). Elected in 100 milliseconds: Appearance-based trait inferences and voting. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 34, 83-110.

Todorov, A., Mandisodza, A. N., Goren, A., and Hall, C. C. (2005). Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science, 308, 1623-1626.

Click here to download the files: 248 Governor photos, 302 Senator photos, an Excel key matching the photos to names of the politicians, and two Excel files containing competence judgements within the respective folders of images.

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