Sex Appeal May Have Hurt Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin’s attractiveness may indeed have affected the 2008 presidential race — by making voters less likely to support the GOP ticket.
By: Tom Jacobs | March 4, 2009 | 20:55 PM (PDT) | 
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In a Sept. 4, 2008 column, just after Sarah Palin accepted the Republican nomination for vice-president, Will Wilkinson wrote admiringly of her “sexual power,” adding: “I think she is a tremendously sexy woman. How this will affect the race, I have no idea, but it’s just got to.”
New research suggests the Cato Institute research fellow was right. The Alaska governor’s attractiveness may indeed have affected the race — by making voters less likely to support the GOP ticket.
In a paper just published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, psychologists Nathan Heflick and Jamie Goldenberg of the University of South Florida describe an experiment they conducted shortly after Wilkinson wrote those words. Building upon 1980s research suggesting attractive women in high-status jobs are perceived as less competent (a finding that has been challenged in recent years), they examined whether Palin’s sex appeal — the subject of endless media chatter in the weeks after she joined the ticket — hindered her ability to make the case she was up for the job.
They took a group of 133 undergraduates and assigned them to write a few lines about one of two celebrities: Palin or actress Angelina Jolie. Half of the participants in each category were asked to write “your thoughts and feelings about this person,” while the other half were asked to write “your thoughts and feelings about this person’s appearance.”
The participants were then asked to rate their subject (Palin or Jolie) in terms of various attributes, including competence. Finally, they were asked who they intended to vote for in the upcoming election.
Those who wrote about Palin’s appearance were more positive in their assessments than those who assessed her qualities as a person, but they rated her far lower in terms of competence, intelligence and capability, and were far less likely to indicate they planned to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket.
“It wasn’t her appearance per se” that soured people on Palin, Heflick said in an interview. “It was the effect her appearance had on their perception of her competence and humanity. Those variables made people less likely to vote for her.” (Not surprisingly, the participants’ feelings about Jolie did not influence their political opinions, whether they focused on her looks or personality.)
Heflick noted that all the self-proclaimed Democrats participating in the exercise indicated they were voting for Obama. So at least in this sample, it was Republicans and independents who were internally debating Palin’s suitability for the job. The study suggests that their confidence in her abilities may have decreased the more they focused on her looks — and thus, in feminist terms, objectified her.
There’s no question that, in the early weeks of the campaign, Palin’s attractiveness was a subject of intense fascination in the media. Even today, the Web site of GQ magazine refers to the Alaska governor as “the cougar in chief,” commenting, “She’s here, she’s built, and she’s not wearing any goddamn old-lady-senator suits, either.” (Take that, Hillary Clinton.)
On the other hand, Palin had no problem sowing doubts about her suitability for the job. She hardly demonstrated a grasp of the issues, and was far from fast on her feet during interviews.
Heflick is quick to admit that people cast their votes for a wide variety of reasons, and it’s impossible to say whether her looks truly swayed voters. Nevertheless, he finds the study’s results troubling, in that they suggest being seen as sexually attractive may impact a woman’s “real-world chances of success.”
What’s more, this dynamic isn’t due solely to the one-track mind of males: The study group was dominated by women, with 96 taking part along with 37 men.
So did the Republican Party make a mistake in heightening Palin’s attractiveness by buying her all those beautiful outfits (a controversy that didn’t break out until after Heflick and Goldenberg completed their experiment)? Perhaps so. Americans have come to accept the idea of a female president, but we may not quite be ready for a sex-symbol-in-chief.
* Authors of the study — Jamie Goldenberg and Nathan Heflick — react to having their work misinterpreted in the mainstream media. See the story here.
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As a 55-yr old white woman who is an ardent supporter of Obama, the first sight of Palin as VP choice was scary. I assumed competence and saw her attractiveness as the counter to Obama's, especially with the well-delivered convention speech. I saw her addition to the ticket as a real threat to Obama. Then she started displaying her incompetence, and it became clear to most people with brains (the large ones, not the little ones)that she could easily ruin the country with her lack of a grasp of basic concepts. We had enough of Cheney being the real power of the country, partly because of Bush's intellectual lack of prowess. Palin was dumb---and vindictive. I am thankful every day that McCain and Palin failed to win the election. If Obama is having a hard time, they would have already killed the country.
Don't be ridiculous.Good looks never hurt anybody.Especially those who are seeking approval.
I agree completely with Ms Jacobson. When Palin burst on the national scene with her strongly delivered (yet divisive) convention speech, it scared the crap out of me because it seemed obvious at the time that someone with her speaking skills (combined with her polished made-for-TV look) could really help McCain win. Only when she stumbled on the subsequent TV interviews and put her stunning lack of political and cultural knowledge on full display did the momentum in her favor die down. It had nothing to do with her looks, as much as Palin herself probably wants to believe it did. It was simply obvious that she was dangerously unqualified for the job and the Republicans didn't manage to fool the people this time.
While looks never hurt anyone this time around lack of basic knowledge did. For many American's having such an incompetant human being anywhere near the presidency seemed not only bad decison making on the part of The Republicans, but showed a lack of leadership ability on the part of Sen. McCain. It also didn't help her cause that when she crashed and burned in interviews she played the blame game refusing to take responsibility for her stunning lack of knowledge.
Sarah displayed far better knowledge of the issues than 0bama or Biden ever did. As for the interview with Katie Couric, it was designed specifically to trip her up. 0bama never had anything but softball interviews from his acolytes in the media that were designed to make him look good.The only time anyone ever asked 0bama a hardball question during the campaign came from Joe the Plumber. 0bama was clearly flustered by the question and had his worshippers in the Ohio state government investigate Joe in order to try to find some skeletons in his closet.Sarah came to prominence in Alaska by fighting against corruption in her own party. 0bama's party in Illinois has much bigger problems with corruption but Barack did absolutely nothing to try to fight it. Instead, he rode that decadent machine all the way to the white house. He endorsed Blagojevich for governor and took bribes from Tony Rezko.
In the 80's (and still today) the press referred to Reagan as an imbacle, a tottering old actor. I would hope people who feel that way would read a book of Reagan's letters. This was a focued, intelligent man. My point is this, the media will always try to portray their opponents as "idiots". These are the same people who find Obama so inspiring, probably because of quotes like this:""In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed." --on a Kansas tornado that killed 12 people"Wow...
In the 80's (and still today) the press referred to Reagan as an imbacle, a tottering old actor. I would hope people who feel that way would read a book of Reagan's letters. This was a focued, intelligent man. My point is this, the media will always try to portray their opponents as "idiots". These are the same people who find Obama so inspiring, probably because of quotes like this:""In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed." --on a Kansas tornado that killed 12 people"Wow...
In the 80's (and still today) the press referred to Reagan as an imbacle, a tottering old actor. I would hope people who feel that way would read a book of Reagan's letters. This was a focued, intelligent man. My point is this, the media will always try to portray their opponents as "idiots". These are the same people who find Obama so inspiring, probably because of quotes like this:""In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed." --on a Kansas tornado that killed 12 people"Wow...
They talked about this study on the O'Reilly Show last night:................................>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsaU01Yu1lU
Makes sense to me! I totally get the study. I have read a lot about it. All in all most people are way off, like Bill O'Reilly. I watched his show last night and they talked about this study by Nathan Heflick and Jamie Goldenberg. They interviewed Jamie she seemed like she was trying to explain the study but O'Reilly kept cutting her off. Very interesting never the less.
Written By:Tom Jacobs
Tom Jacobs is a veteran journalist with more than 20 years experience at daily newspapers. He has served as a staff writer for The Los Angeles Daily News and the Santa Barbara News-Press. His work has also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Ventura County Star.
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