Physical Characteristics and Political Success.
Height
It has often been remarked on and researched with varying degrees of seriousness that in USA Presidential elections more often than not it is the taller candidate who wins. Obviously in the case of Kerry versus Bush it was the 6’ 4” Kerry who lost but on the whole this rule of thumb holds true. It may be that this tendency has strengthened from the time that TV has played a major part in electioneering. For the UK in the days of Churchill and Attlee smaller men seemed to suffer no disadvantage. The current Labour leader electioneering shows the two Milliband brothers at 5’ 11” each in the lead with the shorter Ed Balls and the even shorter (but cute in a Dudley Moore sort of way) Andy Burnham trailing behind. In the same way that Sarkosy was ill advised to stand next to Obama in a Press shoot, the shorter Labour candidates should avoid standing next to the taller Millibands. In the past, using this rule of (Tom) thumb, one could have predicted failure in 1992 for Neil Kinnock (self-identified as the same height as the 5’ 10” George Clooney), considerably shorter than the 6’+ John Major. David Steel’s political career was, as he noted, substantially damaged by the Spitting Image characterization of him as a sniveling, bed wetting midget tucked into the much taller David Owen’s top pocket. Forget the quality of the politics, just tot up the centimeters.
Hair and Hair Colour
In Neil Kinnock’s case, once he was offered to the opinion of the general public, it was not just lack of height that militated against his success. He is noticeably short of thatch (he would have preferred to be short of Thatcher): since the time of the tonsorially challenged Attlee and Churchill, the bald competing with the bald (rather like looking at Jordan’s neckline), not having hair in a politician has been a negative: William Hague, Michael Howard and Michael Foot had a very poor electoral record. Even when elections are within party, such as for the Liberal democrat leadership, it was the hirsute Nick Clegg who was preferred over the balding Vince Cable. 1990s research found that the proportion of bald men making it to elected office in the US was four times less than the number of follicularly challenged males in the population at large (There have been over 200 years of US Presidents and only 23 of those years had a bald POTUS. When Eisenhower beat Adlai Stevenson, it was probably because Stevenson had even less hair than Ike. When Gerald Ford went up against Jimmy Carter it was the Democratic thatch that beat his Republican dome.
In France the Bald Effect isn’t to be found: Giscard, Mitterand, Alain Juppé and Chirac were all bald. In Russia there appears to be curious turn taking: ‘Bald, hairy, bald, hairy, bald, hairy - that's how we elect our leaders…Think about it: Lenin was bald, Stalin was hairy; Kruschev was bald, Brezhnev was hairy; Gorbachev was bald, Yeltsin was hairy - and Putin is practically bald. Medvedev had to win.’ (Women: Timesonline)
Hair colour probably has an effect on the electability of politicians: poor Neil Kinnock, in addition to his other problems, was also red haired and the record for red heads in British politics is not great. Winston Churchill was red when young but barely noticeable as such by the time he had his one and only party electoral success in 1951. Julia Gillard’s recent success in Australia and Margaret Thatcher’s dominance of the 1980s political scene belong in a separate article to be written on female physical characteristics and political success. Gillard was the second red head to become Australian PM (James Scullin in 1929 was the first) but the 80-year gap indicates the rarity of the event. Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy are gingery Liberal Democrat losers in the UK election stakes. I know Stalin and Lenin and even Trotsky were red headed but it is difficult to see the methods that got them to political success as democratic. If the terrified populace of Russia had been wholly free to vote according to their preferences, as we hope happens now in the Western world, then their success would not have been guaranteed.
Blonds are few and far between: the magnificent blond tresses of Michael Heseltine may have reduced the impressiveness of his 6’ 2” height through doubt about the brainpower of both blonds and blondes. Blondes may have more fun but they are not renowned for intellect. Such doubts might well be thought justified when the most significant political act carried out by blondy Ted Heath was to persuade us to vote to enter the European Common Market (I voted ‘No’-it takes more than fair hair to seduce me…). Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, at 5’ 10” is just about tall enough to command some respect (he manages to look taller in the media) but he is as blond as blond could be and this, together with a certain eccentricity probably serves to reduce his IQ in the minds of voters. He may have risen as high as he is going to go, a disappointment to those who see him as a future Conservative leader. Most research has found that the dark haired are always thought of as more intelligent, more stable, more reliable and more dependable than individuals with other hair colours. French research has shown that the majority of those who have won Nobel prizes were dark haired. My own published research and the degree work of students I have supervised have found a consistent difference between dark haired and dark eyed and light haired and light eyed on reaction times, with the darker pigmented significantly faster. As reaction time is correlated with IQ it can be argued that the darker pigmented individual is also the brighter one. This is a finding that may upset the BNP but it has held up under my testing over many years. In the political arena the dark haired should manifest as more quickly responsive, faster thinking, more aggressive, more extraverted, more focused, although on the debit side more inclined to schizophrenia and drunkenness. I don’t make these claims idly: they derive from the work I did for my Ph.D thesis (see References).
The Successful Leader
So, derived from all of the above, what would our ideal Leader look like? I am specifying a male because I will be writing another paper on the female Leader later. He should be around 6’ 1” or 6’ 2”, have a full head of dark hair and be dark eyed. Curiously, the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats have both found this ideal type: David Cameron and Nick Clegg hover just over 6’ and look like brothers or at least half-brothers (it isn’t necessary to mention anything to do with Brokeback). Unfortunately, both have quite light blue eyes and more brown than dark hair. This does not bode well for their cognitive skills in tight situations that require a quick reaction. They may well not be the sharpest tools in the box, either, faced with complex situations that require subtlety and tact. I cite Cameron’s recent indiscretions about Palestinian prison camps and Iranian nuclear weapons. Having a highly stressful job and dark hair has disadvantages: it has been noted recently how Cameron has hair which is thinning and swiftly going grey, areas of scalp becoming visible at the rear. This may not happen as swiftly to Nick Clegg, as his job as Deputy Prime Minister is naturally less stressful. Stress reduces male testosterone (which usually has varied and well-known undesirable effects), speeds up graying as the immune system misidentifies hair pigment and attacks it. This could be seen happening to the highly stressed Gordon Brown. Hair falls out faster under stress, as well, as the capillaries feeding hair follicles tighten and close, causing them to die. An alternative recent hypothesis is that the Grecian or Just for Men has been stopped, now that the election is over. I don’t support that one because it is so important to maintain a youthful look, just as much in power as trying to get it. The harvesting of facial hair that went on in the Labour Government under the guidance of Barbara Follett indicates that this was recognised years ago; a moustache is terribly aging, never mind making you look like a 1970s porn star.
So UKIP should ideally have Leader who is a youthful-looking, clean-shaven 6’ +, dark eyed man with a full mop of dark hair. Clearly this is not what we have got. Does such a lack mean we will never have political success under the present leadership? Looking at all the evidence, I would say ‘Yes’. Do not despair; there is still time for the ideal leader to appear, to emerge trailing clouds of glory over the horizon of the future. At least, as I claim here, we have the template into which he must fit to ensure electoral success.
References:
Detterman, D.K., What does reaction time tell us about Intelligence? in Vernon, P.A., {ed.} Speed of Information Processing and Intelligence, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Company, 1987.
Ellis, H., A Study of British Genius, London: Hurst and Blackett, 1904 (Men of science and painters, sculptors and architects tended to be fair and blue-eyed, whereas men and women of letters and divines tended to be dark).
Fallone, A. R. (1993). Somatic and Psychological Characteristics Associated with Artistic and Mathematical Ability in a University Population; Ph.D Thesis, University of Edinburgh.
Fallone, A. R., Pierce, L., and Bygrave, A. (1997, 6-11th July). Haircolour, Female Stereotypes and Personality: Bimbos , Firecats and Dark Ladies : Labels or Truth? Thematic paper presented by A. R. Fallone to the Fifth European Congress of Psychology, Dublin, Ireland.
Fallone, A.R., and Baluch, B. (1993). Eye Colour: an unconsidered variable in cognitive research? Perceptual and Motor Skills, 77, 1123-1127.
Gary, A.L., and Glover, J., Melanin as a Predictor in the Acquisition of Developmental Skills, The Journal of Psychology, 90: 185-190, 1975.
Hale, B.D., et al, Iris Pigmentation and Fractionated Reaction and Reflex Time, Biological Psychology, 10, pp. 57-67, 1980.
Landers, D.M., Obermeier, G.E., and Patterson, A.H., Iris pigmentation and reactive motor performance, Journal of Motor Behaviour, 8 {3}, 171-179, 1976.
Rosenberg, A., and Kagan, J., Physical and Physiological Correlates of Behavioural Inhibition, Developmental Psychobiology, 22 {8}: 753-770, 1989.
Schacter, S.C., Ransil, B.J., and Geschwind, N., Associations of Handedness with Hair Colour and Learning Disabilities, pp.269-276, Neuropsychologia, Vol.25, No.1b, 1987.
Williams, N., Brain speed link "to intelligence", The Guardian, 19/2/91.
Don’t know how far you can take this. I once read a SiFi story where everyone's job, from the Prostitute to the Prime Minister’s, was decided by psychologists.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the science of reading peoples mental characteristics from their physical ones called?
And what if a tall person stoops, or has mismatched eyes.
Sounds like A. E. Van Vogt, he liked that sort of thing. There was a 19th century physiological psychologist/criminologist called Cesare Lombroso who thought criminal tendencies could be detected from physical characteristics such as eyebrows meeting in the middle, etc. Today we just use body language. The type of psychology that looked only at behaviours and not thoughts was called, unsurprisingly, Behaviourism and dominated Psychology from Lombroso's time to the early '60s.
ReplyDeleteThe tall person, if a politician, will undoubtedly be given posture tuition by advisors to make the most of his height, while heterochromia (such as that of David Bowie-not genetic, though: his comes from eye scars from a playground incident)is very rare.
I'm sure I am not being very extreme-those who advise politicians already take all of this as essential to consider.