Comments

1 - Howard Rheingold

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 10:42

Consider this:

1. My state has a database of photographs

2. Cable television providers have, in theory, the capability of customizing broadcasts to individuals.

ergo — it might be possible for political candidates to juice up their persuasiveness in my household by morphing my driver’s license photo into the image of their face

2 - Boing Boing

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 10:53

Morph your face with a politico’s and you’re likely to be persuaded by him

Howard sez, “This is startling, geeky, powerful, and scary: a prof at Stanford has found that by morphing 40% of your face into the face of a political figure, you are MORE likely to be persuaded to agree with that political figure.” Link (Thanks, How…

3 - Joe

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 11:09

What does that mean, their photos were morphed into photos of the candidates? I mean, I understand the morphing, but how and when and where were these morphed images shown to the participants? According to the summary, never. So apparently just the fact that the morphing took place, without the knowledge of the participants, changed the participants’ behavior. I find that hard to believe.

4 - Concerned Citizen

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 11:20

You can barely tell what features from the original face were taken to make the new face. I guess it’s subtle enough that brainless folk who care not about what the political candidate is saying or doing can relate to an image, and vote for that person. Simply because, “hey they look a little like me they must not be all that bad”?

Cool study, but I’m skeptical too

5 - Dave

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 11:41

Joe, it’s in this paragraph:

“[...] one [group] had their own photograph morphed into a picture of Bush, the second had their photograph morphed into a picture of Kerry, and the third was given un-morphed photographs of the two candidates.”

It doesn’t explicitly say that the first two groups were given photos too, but it’s implied by the fact that the third was.

6 - Claris

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 11:44

Perhaps “Joe” is unfamiliar with abstracts, and might like to try reading the linked PDF or waiting for the full study.

I’m currently a subject in a Stanford study myself. Don’t think it’s quite as intriguing, though.

7 - Kevin

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 11:49

The write-up for the pilot study says that the effect was reversed for females — they were less likely to vote for the (male) candidate when he was morphed to look like them. Was this true also in the Bush/Kerry experiment?

The earlier paper also mentioned “there could be some effect of the morphing process in general, as opposed to morphing with the self” — did you test for this in the new study? The morphed pictures look smoother (almost as if they’d been retouched). Could that be a factor?

8 - Andrew

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 11:56

Couldn’t the morphing of an individual’s features into that of a political candidate have an antithetical effect if the individual in question suffered from issues of low self esteem or other personality issues? Also was there any interest in this study as the potential effect of morphing a politician’s countenance with a person or persons known to be popular with, or viewed in a positive light by the test subject? For example, would a huge fan of John Lennon and his music be similarly influenced by the employment of a similar technique? As a matter of fact, why stop there? Why not use aural as well as optical enhancements to induce this effect? Another example. An individual is known to have idolized her father. Not only is the politicians face slightly morphed to resemble the subject’s father, but also intonation, vocal cadence, and iconographic phraseology as well? If the work were subtle, I would estimate the the effect on subjects who were unaware of the slight changes could be profound. I’m surprised that vocal sounds, and things like cadence and intonation were also not included in this study because of their additional potential to influence the viewer/listener. To the subject with the strong relationship with her father, wouldn’t extremely subtle changes in the way the candidate looked, spoke, and sounded, as well as what phrase types, hand and body language were employed all serve to significantly enhance the effect? I know I’ve been a bit redundant but this topic has sparked my curiosity because as another commenter above has already pointed out, marketing entities have already become so adroit at gathering and disseminating information regarding consumers. Utilizing methods like those in the test and the audible components I’ve described might well represent the ultimate in “targeted” messaging. I’d certainly be more likely to purchase a car if my father was telling me what a solid and sensible investment I’d be making! Candidates to cola - the implications of these findings are both fascinating and disquieting at the same time.

9 - brian

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 12:00

The correct control would have been to give subjects photographs of other people morphed into a picture of one of the candidates. Since that was not done, this study shows nothing other than that people may be persuaded by looking at a morphed picture. It was not shown that the morphed picture is of the subject has anything to do with the subject being persuaded. Are psychologists not required to know how to do science?

10 - Jacquilynne

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 12:06

I recall an interesting art project that took a bunch of pictures and created averages out of them. The interesting thing about the “average” people was that they were all gorgeous as hell. They had smooth skin and soft features and were generally beautiful. Though this is many times removed from that level of averaging, I can’t help but think even low order merges could be creating similar results.

The morphed Bush figure above has a lot less of that simian quality so often ascribed to him. And the morphed Kerry simply looks younger and healthier.

11 - Hello??? .... is this thing on??

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 12:15

Morph your face with a politico’s and you’re likely to be persuaded by him (from: Cory Doctorow)

12 - Howard Rheingold

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 12:31

I would not assume from the abstract that the scientists don’t know how to run proper control tests. I know that Bailenson has been very carefully studying this phenomenon for at least a year.

13 - John Wolfson

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 13:14

can we get a link to a site to morph our faces?

14 - PRESTOPUNDIT

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 13:17

http://www.hayekcenter.org/prestopunditarchive/005827.html

Who would you vote for? The Birds of a Feather Effect. (ht H&R)….

15 - Howard Rheingold

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 13:32

Can someone help me construct a usable URL out of

http://www.stanford.edu/%7Ebailenso/papers/Political%20Psycology%20in%20press.pdf

(I figured out the problem — I had omitted a quote mark. Sorry and thanks)

16 - Eric Stiens

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 14:16

Sure, use this one

http://morph-study.notlong.com

17 - Allan

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 14:52

The research method appears deeply flawed. They showed “either an original digital photograph or a blend of the original and the subject’s photograph” [p. 8] and asked for an evaluation.

But the blended photograph is going to show smoother skin tones and more symmetric facial features, both of which we associate with beauty. The blended portrait will be more beautiful than the unblended. There is a classic study that takes a dozen or so random photographs and morphs them together to form the most beautiful man and woman.

Back to the drawing board: show two morphed images.

18 - Howard Rheingold

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 16:08

Thanks for the incisive critical comments. I believe that Dr. Bailenson will respond here eventually.

19 - Rev. Dr. Spyder X

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 16:16

Try this site for morphing. I’m pretty sure you can upload your own pic.. http://www.morphases.com/editor/

20 - dan

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 17:10

I seem to remember a study, although I forgot where I saw it, where people also marry partners with similar facial charactoristics.

21 - Jeremy Bailenson

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 19:15

Hello all, thanks for the comments!

I will soon answer more specifically the questions raised in this forum. To briefly clear up some issues:

In the new Bush/Kerry study, participants always saw photographs of Bush and Kerry side by side. We had three conditions.

1) Self is morphed with Bush, unfamiliar face is morphed with Kerry.

2) Self is morphed with Kerry, unfamiliar face is morphed with Bush.

3) No morph for either Bush or Kerry.

Results showed that respondents prefered Bush more in 1 than 3, and more in 3 than 2. Vice versa for Kerry.

As a further control, the ’self’ morphed photos for one respondent was always used as an ‘other’ photo for another respondent, ensuring that attractiveness, etc. of the photographs was controlled completely across conditions 1 or 2.

We definitely know how to design a control condition :).

I hope to have a complete writeup of this study available soon.

Take care,

Jeremy

22 - PRESTOPUNDIT

Fri, Feb 11, 2005
@ 23:04

http://www.hayekcenter.org/prestopunditarchive/005827.html

Who would you vote for? The Narcissus Effect. (ht H&R)….

23 - Blindphisch

Sat, Feb 12, 2005
@ 09:42

have a look at this:

http://www.politicsandthelifesciences.org/Contents/Contents-1993-2/AbsHesch.html

it’s a few years old…

24 - David

Sat, Feb 12, 2005
@ 12:51

Men and women also tend to choose lifetime mates based on similar facial features to their own. This seems to be a similar phenomenon.

25 - SKY TG24 Pianeta Internet

Sat, Feb 12, 2005
@ 14:54

Persuasori occulti e morphing

Questo post di Rheingold é potenzialmente

26 - california patriot blog

Sat, Feb 12, 2005
@ 15:11

Something familiar about that guy…

Some guys at Stanford have released some interesting research on how we vote (props to Smart Mobs).

The study consisted of three groups of respondents: one had their own photograph morphed into a picture of Bush, the second had their photograph…

27 - holycola.net

Fri, Feb 18, 2005
@ 07:20

Seeing is believing, but it shouldn’t be

The question really was whether or not people in general would recognize when that time came, or if it would take some hard lessons to mature our understanding of the true nature of image as something malleable and subject to bias as much as writin…

28 - holycola.net

Fri, Feb 18, 2005
@ 07:21

Seeing is believing, but it shouldn’t be

The question really was whether or not people in general would recognize when that time came, or if it would take some hard lessons to mature our understanding of the true nature of image as something malleable and subject to bias as much as writin…