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Paul the Octopus can predict the World Cup, and whether animals can be used to predict the United States election. On September 19, a group of psychologists and neuroscientists from the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in United States published an article that explored such a question, unlike Paul the octopus, in that they used monkeys as subjects. This is a prediction based on the results of experiments in neuroscience and psychology, not a purely probabilistic technique, so let's take a look.
The premise of this prediction is that appearance is justice, which is true in all fields, even in the political field, and this law cannot be escaped. In predicting the outcome of a political election, one may make quick judgments based on the physical characteristics of the candidates. Give the kindergarten children a photo of the candidate, they can also make a quick selection, and the prediction rate is not bad. This kind of appearance-based decision-making may have been useful in ancient times to quickly assess the strength and capabilities of a potential leader or adversary, and was characterized by ecological rationality. So, is the mechanism behind this evolutionarily conservative? What are the characteristics of the visual bias?
Watch out for the monkey's gaze
The researchers chose to use rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) as the experimental subjects because they are relatively close in terms of kinship. If rhesus macaques can get similar results on visual test experiments, it suggests that this mechanism is evolutionarily conserved.
In this study, the researchers recruited six male rhesus macaques and asked them to look at photos of candidates in the previous United States Senate, governor, and presidential elections (about 300 pairs in total), and the order and placement of the people in the photos were random. In order to reduce the effect of color on the rhesus macaques, the photos were all processed in gray. Subjects are given 2.5 seconds of observation time for each pair of photographs, and their eye movements are recorded, as shown in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: Experiments in progress
As shown in Figure 1, two grayscale photographs of the same size are shown, with colored markings showing the eye movements of rhesus monkeys. In this process, if the monkeys perform similarly in each pair of electoral photos, then the study is over. However, to the delight of the researchers, rhesus macaques look at the losers more often than at the winners, as shown in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2: Rhesus macaques look at losers more
Seeing this, some readers may think that shouldn't they look at the successful ones more often? In our view, the more you look at an object, the more you like it. However, researchers understand that rhesus macaques have a relatively strong social hierarchy. In a group of rhesus macaques, the rhesus macaques will glance at the dominant one and then immediately look away. Because continuous visual observation can be considered disrespectful to the strong.
This theory can be applied to other experimental results in this study. For example, rhesus macaques look at women more often than males. Rhesus macaques look at older people more often than younger candidates. This is due to the fact that young and vigorous male rhesus macaques predominate in the rhesus macaque population, and there is no greater threat to females and older people.
Can you be the leader and touch your chin
So, from the perspective of rhesus macaques, what facial features do capable people have that can be valued by rhesus macaques?
The researchers subdivided the features of the face, including chin width, cheekbone width, facial height, and more. Other facial features, such as baldness, glasses, and smile type, were also measured. Combine these facial features with election results for correlation analysis. The study found that the saliency of the chin was consistent with the election results, and the correlation was high, as shown in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3: People with more pronounced chins, in the eyes of rhesus macaques, are capable
The rhesus macaque tells us an ancient memory that has not yet been realized by humans: the chin is the core of a person's leadership ability, perhaps, everyone can also test their subconscious in life, do you think that strangers with a more prominent chin are more capable?
Of course, in the election of human society, there will be more influencing factors, not only facial features, but also the candidate's knowledge, conversation, past political achievements, etc. In addition to the personal characteristics of these candidates, the social environment at that time will also affect everyone's choice. For example, during the war years, a candidate with more youthful and strong male characteristics would be more likely to be accepted. But in times of peace, such candidates are not revered by the public.
Going back to the 2024 United States election, according to the article, the rhesus monkey's eye movement trajectory is not much different when facing an elderly candidate and a female candidate. Which one do you prefer?
Related paper links: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.17.613526v1