Do Facial Trait Correlates with Roll Call Voting in Parliament? Using fWHR to Study Performance in Politics

TL;DR

This study investigates whether facial traits, specifically fWHR, correlate with political performance in parliamentary voting, finding no significant influence of facial width-to-height ratio on MPs' voting cooperation.

Contribution

The paper introduces the FIMP methodology to measure political performance and examines the relationship between facial traits and voting behavior in Ukrainian MPs.

Findings

No significant correlation between fWHR and MPs' voting cooperation.

FIMP provides a new way to quantify political performance.

Facial traits do not predict parliamentary voting behavior.

Abstract

Research has shown that people recognize and select leaders based on their facial appearance. However, considering the correlation between the performance of leaders and their facial traits, empirical findings are mixed. This paper adds to the debate by focusing on two previously understudied aspects of facial traits among political leaders: (i) previous studies have focused on electoral success and achievement drive of politicians omitting their actual daily performance after elections; (ii) previous research has analyzed individual politicians omitting the context of social circumstances which potentially influence their performance. We address these issues by analyzing Ukrainian members of parliament (MPs) who voted for bills in six consecutive Verkhovna Rada starting from Rada 4 (2002-06) to Rada 9 (2019-Present) to study politicians' performance, which is defined as co-voting or cooperation between MPs in voting on the same bill. In simple words, we analyze whether politicians tend to follow leaders when voting. This ability to summon the votes of others is interpreted as better performance. To measure performance, we proposed a generic methodology named Feature Importance For Measuring Performance (FIMP) that can be used in various scenarios. Using FIMP, our data suggest that MPs vote has no impact from their colleagues with higher or lower facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), a popular measure of the facial trait.