Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy

Post by jfengel » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

derekam wrote: post #190

karpierz wrote: post #34

This isn't a study that shows that people's faces indicate their political leanings. It's a study which shows that pictures that people select to represent themselves publicly have features that indicate political leaning.

Exactly. There was some fuss a while back about a similar classifier for sexuality. It turned out to be guessing mostly based on head tilt, personal hygiene and whether the person was wearing glasses. The physiognomy component was ~nonexistent even though it was publicized as though it weren’t. People intentionally if at times subconsciously present themselves in a way that signals information to kindred spirits. You…

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #239

randcraw wrote: post #205

I wonder if the study accurately reflects the lack of political common ground in the population. Are only 28% of us “moderates”? It’d be interesting to do the same analysis with photos of people taken 10, 20, 30, 40,... 100 years ago to see if the intersection (28%) grows/shrinks historically. Were we always so easily politically separable by our appearance alone? Has our appearance always revealed our political lean…

There's no definitive definition of "moderate". People who want to argue most people are moderate say the political middle is the 75% middle of the bell curve, while people who want to argue most people are partisan say the political middle is only the middle 20% of the bell curve. What is accurate to say is that political views in Congress have bifurcated (not a bell curve), and that people in America have "sorted"…

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

Post by crazygringo » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #283

crazygringo wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no definitive definition of "moderate". People who want to argue most people are moderate say the political middle is the 75% middle of the bell curve, while people who want to argue most people are partisan say the political middle is only the middle 20% of the bell curve. What is accurate to say is that political views in Congress have bifurcated (not a bell curve), and that people in America have "sorted"…

> of the bell curve There is no bell curve. Political orientation is largely a self-referencing phenomenon. Outside the political elite, who have a high degree of ideological coherence, knowing a person's views on one issue is a loose predictor on their views on another. Gun-toting anti-abortion lesbians and pro-immigration free-market feminists are real, and they aren't some striking minority.

Post by xxpor » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

hntrader wrote: post #240

gzer0 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points and summary. Adding on to that, the following was from the abstract about 2 sentences in. Seems like some users do enjoy jumping straight to the comments! * Political orientation was correctly classified in 72% of liberal–conservative face pairs, remarkably better than chance (50%), human accuracy (55%), or one afforded by a 100-item personality questionnaire (66%). * Accuracy was similar across countries…

"controlling for ... ethnicity" There's significant signal buried in here that is likely not controlled for, depending on how granular their controls are. White-German and White-Italian are much more (10-13 percent) likely to be conservative leaning than White-Irish or White-British. Hispanic-Cuban are more likely to be conservative leaning than Hispanic-Mexican.