title: Political attitudes bias the mental representation of a presidential candidate's face.
abstract: Using a technique known as reverse-correlation image classification, we demonstrated that the face of Mitt Romney as represented in people's minds varies as a function of their attitudes toward Mitt Romney. Our findings provide evidence that attitudes bias how people see something as concrete and well learned as the face of a political candidate during an election. Practically, our findings imply that citizens may not merely interpret political information about a candidate to fit their opinion, but also may construct a political world in which they literally see candidates differently.
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University.
authors.forename: Alison I
authors.initials: AI
authors.lastname: Young
authors.forename: Kyle G
authors.initials: KG
authors.lastname: Ratner
authors.forename: Russell H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Fazio
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001290:Attitude; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011057:Politics; D012938:Social Perception; D035502:Trust / Q000523:psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: attitudes; construal; face perception; social cognition; social perception