Spezio Michael L, Rangel Antonio, Alvarez Ramon Michael, O'Doherty John P, Mattes Kyle, Todorov Alexander, Kim Hackjin, Adolphs Ralph
Scripps College, 1030 Columbia Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711, USA.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2008 Dec;3(4):344-52. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsn040. Epub 2008 Oct 28.
Election outcomes correlate with judgments based on a candidate's visual appearance, suggesting that the attributions viewers make based on appearance, so-called thin-slice judgments, influence voting. Yet, it is not known whether the effect of appearance on voting is more strongly influenced by positive or negative attributions, nor which neural mechanisms subserve this effect. We conducted two independent brain imaging studies to address this question. In Study 1, images of losing candidates elicited greater activation in the insula and ventral anterior cingulate than images of winning candidates. Winning candidates elicited no differential activation at all. This suggests that negative attributions from appearance exert greater influence on voting than do positive. We further tested this hypothesis in Study 2 by asking a separate group of participants to judge which unfamiliar candidate in a pair looked more attractive, competent, deceitful and threatening. When negative attribution processing was enhanced (specifically, under judgment of threat), images of losing candidates again elicited greater activation in the insula and ventral anterior cingulate. Together, these findings support the view that negative attributions play a critical role in mediating the effects of appearance on voter decisions, an effect that may be of special importance when other information is absent.
选举结果与基于候选人外貌的判断相关，这表明选民基于外貌做出的归因，即所谓的薄片判断，会影响投票。然而，外貌对投票的影响是受积极归因还是消极归因的影响更大，以及哪些神经机制支持这一效应，目前尚不清楚。我们进行了两项独立的脑成像研究来解决这个问题。在研究1中，落选候选人的图像比获胜候选人的图像在脑岛和腹侧前扣带回中引发了更大的激活。获胜候选人根本没有引发差异激活。这表明外貌带来的消极归因对投票的影响比积极归因更大。我们在研究2中进一步验证了这一假设，让另一组参与者判断一对不熟悉的候选人中哪一个看起来更有吸引力、更有能力、更虚伪和更有威胁性。当增强消极归因处理时（具体来说，在威胁判断下），落选候选人的图像再次在脑岛和腹侧前扣带回中引发了更大的激活。总之，这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即消极归因在介导外貌对选民决策的影响中起着关键作用，当缺乏其他信息时，这种影响可能尤为重要。
