Barry White for president

By R.L.G. | NEW YORK

PART II in a short series of factors that shape your linguistic perception, but which themselves are para-linguistic at best: yesterday we looked at a study that found a more positive emotional valence in words typed predominantly with the right hand. Today comes a study that finds voters consistently preferring political candidates with deeper voices. Casey Klofstad (University of Miami), along with Rindy Anderson and Susan Peters (Duke University), conducted a study in which voters were played two instances of the phrase "I urge you to vote for me this November." Subjects consistently preferred the lower voice, even among two women. The two contrasting phrases were digitally manipulated, not read by different people.

Before science writers rush off to write headlines like the one I wrote above, though, any number of caveats are in order. This is one of those highly artificial forced choices, where in the absence of any other information, voters are expected to render an almost random judgment. It's interesting that they slightly prefer deep voices, and perhaps more interesting still that they like women tending towards the contralto. But how much this would affect real-world choices is hard to say, and I feel comfortable guessing that the real-world effect would be small.

It's slightly more interesting when aggregated with other factors that influence political judgment: that voters tend to prefer taller and more attractive candidates, for example. It seems the preference for physically impressive male leaders runs strong; this makes me think of campaign-time jokes about John McCain's age and war injury, Bill Clinton's paunch and Mike Dukakis's stature. I wouldn't be surprised if the effect weren't stronger for American presidential candidates than for (say) European prime ministers, since the presidency combines the roles of chief executive and symbolic head of state. But all this preference for physical alpha-males should trouble us slightly, given that our leaders are no longer expected to slay our enemies on a battlefield.