Posing bias reveals politics

Can a person’s politics be pinpointed from their pose? Researchers in the Department of Psychology have shown that leaners to the left are seen as politically more left-leaning than their right-posing counterparts.

In an online study, Professor Lorin Elias and student Kari Duerksen presented participants with images of people displaying either leftward or rightward posing biases and asked them to rate their political orientation. Individuals with a leftward posing bias were rated by participants as significantly more liberal than those leaning to the right.

Elias, who has studied directional biases in human behaviour for over than 20 years, notes in the study's abstract that their "findings support the idea that posing direction is related to perceived emotionality of an individual, and that liberals are stereotyped as more emotional than conservatives.”

An article based on the study, “Left wings to the left: Posing and perceived political orientation,” was recently published in the scientific journal, Laterality.

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