Comments on: Sex Appeal May Have Hurt Sarah Palin

By: lee tabin

lee tabin — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:06:26 +0000

Palin actually governed from the center and part of her "stumbles" were caused by the editing of Gibson's interview with her which you can google. Her problem was that she had an R after her name. Obama made and makes gaffe after gaffe and Biden is the king of Gaffes but the media seems to ignore them.

Palin was the youngest and most popular governor in the country when she was chosen. How dumb could she have been?

All the data I have seen but this shows she helped the happless Rino, McCain, and he needed help with both his presentation and his views. She is so stupid she is making a million dollars a month.

By: Anonymous User

Anonymous User — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:16:08 +0000

you mean it wasn’t cause she was clueless and suspect of bullying and believes no knowledge for sex ed and shoots things and is big oil and big pork and the interview with COURIC and THE SNL SKIT and and and….?THE HUGE fanfare about WARDROBE PURCHASE WHEN AMERICANS WERE LOSING homes and JOBS .. wasn’t pretty for other reasons.I THINK THE VARIABLES AREN’T ALL THERE IN THIS STUDY.

By: Anonymous User

Anonymous User — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:43:14 +0000

I’m going to attempt a similar study with my psych class next year, without biasing the study by discussing this study first. I get what you are trying to do, I just question the manner in which you attempted to arrive at your findings. Honest people can disagree on methodology and I sincerely hope that students in your classes are at liberty to do so. Good luck to you. Art

By: heflick nathan

heflick nathan — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:34:34 +0000

Art: You are missing the point of the study. I don’t know what else to say.Palin was equally attractive and we had an equal number of Palin haters and lovers in both conditions related to Palin. The only thing that differed is what we forced people to focus on. So clearly, the liberal leaning had nothing to do with the effect of appearance focus on her ratings of competence. You could argue that focusing on appearance only lowers competence if you don’t like the person (since we had mostly dem participants). But even then, we found the voting effect only for republicans and independents, many of which did like her. And further, Jolie wasn’t hated by most of the participants and we found the same effects for her.I don’t know what else to say. Some people will never get it, apparently. What is sad is that these people that don’t get it could possibly spread this to others who take their word for it that this study (or anything else) sucks.

By: Anonymous User

Anonymous User — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:29:30 +0000

Thanks for responding. I still think that your study lacks a control group. Yes, I can follow this design now that you’ve explained it better, but I still don’t think it is valid. Both Jolie and Palin are considered attractive. Where is the neutral variable? Again, I don’t know why you don’t see the biased sample as a complication. If the majority of your subjects are liberal-leaning, then they have some political biases against Palin–I hardly think those biases would influence the results toward Jolie. However, with this whole crisis with Jolie’s husband and his ex, I’m sure some of your celebrity-worshiping young subjects have taken sides in the great debate. (I don’t follow it seriously, but I also teach sociology so following low-brow “news” is a necessary job hazard.) I would be more convinced of your results if the subjects were rating anonymous people. I still can’t give your design anything above a C, however. As far as discouraging my students by blasting their designs, I don’t. They end up becoming more meticulous and more likely to critique a shaky study, which I still think your is. However, I’m not a “My Way or Highway” teacher, either. I’m open to compromise. I’ve often disagreed completely with the conclusions of a study, as I’m sure you’ve done with other studies, but grade the students on the work they put into the study itself, but their designs still has to pass muster. If you are convinced that this result is valid, then you should be able to replicate the results. You are free to use my design for your doctoral thesis, as long as you give me some “props” on your book tour. Art

By: heflick nathan

heflick nathan — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:48:02 +0000

Art:Real quick. You are missing the point of the study and that is throwing you way off. If the study was about comparing Jolie to Palin, or whatever else you are thinking, then this would be an awful design.But the point of the study, as I have written many, many times, was to test if focusing on a woman’s appearance impacts how people feel and think about her. And, consistent with decades of past research testing similar ideas, we found that it most certainly did.And the fact that the sample was mostly democrats has little to do with this. Palin AND Jolie were rated worse on competence after people focused on their appearance compared to their personality. And also, we found that only non-democrats were LESS likely to vote for Palin after focusing on her appearance.Lastly, I am not a professor (Jamie is though). I am a grad student, but thanks for promoting me! I could use the extra cash.

By: heflick nathan

heflick nathan — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:41:15 +0000

Art:Did you read our reply to the media’s miscoverage of this study? If you have, and still reach these conclusions, then I don’t know what to say.As we have written countless times, the study had NOTHING to do with comparing Jolie to Palin. It had to do with the effects of focusing on a woman’s appearance (compared to her personality) on how people percieve her. We used Palin and Jolie because they are women who people know enough to write about and rate.You write that we didn’t have a control group, which is absurd. We randomly assigned people to one of four groups (Palin personality, palin appearance, Jolie personalty, Jolie appearance). They wrote about whichever topic they were assigned to. The study was comparing the appearance focused participants to the personality focused participants.I hope this has cleared somethings up. I hate to think that someone who can’t follow such a simple design is teaching high school students psychology. I mean, someone could design a very good study (like this one) and you totally miss the point and give them a bad grade, discouraging them from psychology.The study was peer reviewed by top scholars in the field (JESP, which it was accepted to, is a top level journal in psychology). I am sure if it sucked as bad as you seem to think, they wouldn’t have published it. Hopefully you get it now.Nathan Heflick

By: Art Robles

Art Robles — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:03:38 +0000

The negative reactions your are getting, Professors Heflick and Goldenberg, have more to do with the faults of your study than with the findings. There are so many flaws in this study that the findings have to be invalidated.The fact that your study involved mostly Democrats is not irrelevent. They already knew who Governor Palin was and more than likely already formed a negative opinion of her, based likely on the negative opinions that the mainstream press and liberal political blogs had expressed by then. I’m assuming many of the subjects were young college students. It is obvious that young people today worship attractive Hollywood celebrities. Therefore, it is not surprising that Miss Jolie received such high ratings.This study does not have a control group. That is one of the most fundamental features of a good study. This one has none. What can you compare these findings to? A better study would’ve involved asking the subjects to rate the competence of a fictional candidate for a fictional office, thereby eliminated notoriety of a celebrity as a possible source of bias. No mention should be made of political party affiliation, again to eliminate that bias. A control group and an experimental group should be given a list of qualifications and a summary of the candidate that is the same for both groups. They would be comparing apples to apples, not apples to oranges, as this South Florida study did (it makes no sense to compare a politician to an actor). The control group would be given a photo of a woman previously deemed in a separate study to be neutral, neither particularly pretty or homely. The experimental group would see the photo of the attractive woman. The photo would be the only difference–that is called the independent variable. They difference in responses–if there is one–would be the dependent variable.Standard, basic stuff. I’m surprised that two university professors designed such a faulty study. I teach psychology in high school. I have my students design studies at the beginning of the semester. The design by the South Florida professors would’ve gotten a D from me. I would have had the students makes significant changes to it before actually conducting the study.I believe that the professors hypothesis may be correct, but this study was so poorly done. It lacks vailidity, since it doesn’t measure what it intends to measure. It lacks reliability. Give this study to a different group and you may end up with widely different results.

By: jenny jenny

jenny jenny — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:58:14 +0000

I think I am going to subscribing to this magazine. Does anyone else receive the actual magazine? I was wondering how much stuff from there web site is in the actual magazine. I hope this article is in the magazine. You see I go to school at USF and Nathan Heflick was my instructor for Intro to Psychology…Oh, and he was awesome! Also, I have a few friends that had Jamie Goldenberg for their Intro to Psychology class and they all raved about what an outstanding teacher she was. Anyway, many many of us here at USF want to possibly subscribe to the magazine.

By: sara login

sara login — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:40:38 +0000

Jerry and Laura….I was just thinking the same thing. I was also wandering how the researchers must be feeling about some of the media’s reaction. I wouldn’t be very happy that is for sure! I have seen Heflick comment on some of the articals trying to explain the true findings… Poor guys.

By: johnson jerry

johnson jerry — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:35:25 +0000

I could not agree with you more Laura. The first artical I read was on aol.com I then came here and what a differance in findings. The media is a cruel world.

By: keeps laura

keeps laura — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:31:59 +0000

Wow, what an uproar this study has recieved. It is almost hard to take in. All in all I have seen some really crap reporting. I am glad we can count on miller-mccune for the facts.

By: bell jon

bell jon — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:21:30 +0000

What an interesting study….Thank you so much for sharing.

By: dawn handle

dawn handle — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 04:20:23 +0000

I sort of feel bad for Palin….But she brought it on her self.

By: dawn handle

dawn handle — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 04:19:40 +0000

I have a very beautiful (voluptuous and blonde) daughter who feels she is initially underestimated. When she is unattached, she dyes her hair so she will be less attractive to men who prowl for dumb blondes. I understand the point that the psychologists were trying to illustrate.