Too Pretty? Oh C’mon!
The only Official Sarah Palin Fan Club!
ConservativeAmerican.org – Leading the way Right
By Peter Andrew
One of the most annoying things about liberals is their hypocrisy. It drives me crazy how they can consistently say one thing, then do another or have one opinion on an issue when a democrat is involved and another when a republican is involved. This story is a perfect example of the absolute rubbish the left spews unanswered by the power of the press.
Now they say Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was too pretty!!
It was okay for them to talk about what a hunk Obama was, with his abs and swimsuit in Hawaii. Being good looking helped him. It was a good thing (see: With Obama, Sexism is Okay) . He was smart AND good looking! Amazing. Better vote for him with that kind of combination, right? That’s the story we were sold.
And what about the younger and more fit Billy Bob Clinton? Remember all the stories about how women thought he was so good looking? We were told he had strong support from women voters because he was handsome. That was okay then. Whatever happened to what is good for the goose is good for the gander?
Even the candidacy of Dick Gephart of Missouri was given more credence because they said he looked like Robert Redford. I seem to remember people talking about how handsome JFK was too. So, for guys it is okay to be good looking and talk about it.
However, for Sarah Palin, you cannot talk about her beauty (see: Palin is Hot, Clinton is Not.)
Now, Jim Galloway at the Atlanta Journal reports on a recent study:
“…published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology…with Jamie Goldenberg, an associate professor over at USF who co-authored the article with Nathan Heflick. The two researchers had theorized a correlation between looks and competence. “We were shocked that we got any movement on the voting,” Goldenberg said Thursday. “It didn’t affect Democrats. They were all going to vote for Obama no matter what.”
Stop the tape! Stop the tape. Wait just a minute! So, did either Heflick or Goldenberg bother to stop and think (just for a tiny moment) that the Democrats ONLY voted for Obama because of his looks? This guy clearly won ONLY because of his partially-black LOOKS!! These bafoon jealous-women researches don’t point that out though! Democrats are “ABOVE” that!! Give me a freakin’ break. These two liberal nut jobs say a person’s appearance ONLY effected republicans and independents. Gag. Okay, roll the tape…
“It was only Republicans and independents who were moved.” Basically, the students were asked to write about each woman — whether about her accomplishments as a person, or about her looks. “What we found is that in both cases, whether they wrote about Palin or Angelina Jolie,…”
Stop the tape! Stop the darn tape! Angelina Jolie? Brangelina? Uhm, excuse me, but did she or it run for anything? Is she a politician now? They lump her lumps in with Sarah Palin?! These people are pathetic. Roll the tape, let’s get this over with.
“…when they wrote about her appearance rather than the person, they evaluated her to be less competent, less fully human. And in the case of the Palin prime, they were less likely to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket,” Goldenberg said.”
Less than fully human?? So these idiot college types think Sarah Palin is “less fully human?!!” So, is Sarah Palin an alien? Is she from some pretty planet where all the pretty people come from? What kind of absolute nonsense is this, that it gets national media coverage? So, now Obama 2012 wants you to think Palin is “less than fully human.”
ConservativeAmerican.org believes Sarah Palin is, in fact, pretty. But too pretty? Oh C’mon!
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March 6th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Wow, way to NOT read the actual study and come to entirely incorrect conclusions about our findings. In your words, STOP THE TAPE!
1. This has nothing to do with liberal or conservative agendas. They (the authors of the study, not the lame brain reporters) are psychologists, who were interested in the effects of appearence focus (objectification) on how people percieve women. It was a scientific study with objective data (as opposed to your nonsense opinions that aren’t based on much of anything).
2. They found that people who were randomly assigned to write about Palin’s appearance later rated her as less competent (and were less willing to vote for McCain-Palin) compared to people who were randomly assigned to write about who she is as a person.
They also found that people did the same thing when rating Jolie (Jolie was not compared to Palin, so that point isn’t valid at all).
3. Based on the study, why would these researchers conclude that Obama won because he is good-looking? They did not manipulate focus on Obama’s appearance at all.
4. Sigh….Less fully human has to be with her being percieved as lower in traits that are viewed as “more essential to being human” (e.g., intelligent as opposed to fast which isn’t essentially to being human). It has nothing to do with aliens. Get a grip and do some responsible journalism.
5. Ok that is all. Thanks for doing such an awful job reporting these findings.
6. Oh, and the authors never correlated a link between competence and attractiveness. That journalist who said that is an idiot and you took his idiot comments and ran with them without seeing if they were even true. Is someone who follows an idiot worse than the original idiot? I think so.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
“Alvin,”
Thanks for the reply. You make some good points. Perhaps you can find the authors work at the school and supply a direct link to the actual study for our readers. You’re right that we used the Hot Air report as a source. And you’re right that this may have been an error and may also have been unfair. We admit our mistakes here. Points #5 & #6 are well taken.
Because one of the study conclusions apparently was “people who were randomly assigned to write about Palin’s appearance later rated her as less competent (and were less willing to vote for McCain-Palin,” then I think the researches owed it to those they intended to share the study with to also (study men and) see if those who would be assigned to write about Obama’s appearance would rate him less competent and would be less likely to vote for him. The researchers are smart people (and apparently have fans like you). They know darn well that Obama will run again and that a likely opponent could be Sarah Palin. It is very fair of us to observe that if the research findings are correct, we also want to note that President Obama won because he was black, or at least partly black. People hated Bush, yes. However, many republicans and conservatives voted for Obama thinking it would be good for the nation, healing, to have a black president. These researches could do a study on that. Like it or not, that’s a fair observation.
We never suggested the researchers manipulated focus about Obama, so Point # 3 is not one we can agree with. The researchers appear (rightly or wrongly) to have a bias against Palin. Please note I did not say they, in fact, have that bias. Before you go nuts on their behalf, look at it calmly. The study gets publicity because it included Palin. That may have been why she was included. The study concludes (or the “idiot journalist” concluded, and we as idiot bloggers…your words…repeated) that Palin’s beauty may have hurt her politically.
So you can’t defend your position that the study was not political. That’s nonsense. If the researchers were so concerned about not being political, they would not have included politicians. We have to wonder if these researchers included her because they just couldn’t understand why she could be so popular. That’s a fair question. If you are correct that these people intended no political conclusion, then why did they draw one? That’s a bit of a stretch Alvin. You can’t have it both ways.
Why would researches include Palin and Jolie in the same study if they, as you suggest, had no intention whatsoever of comparing the two? Obviously, when you look at items, A, B, & C in a study they will be compared. So our comment about that certainly is fair. The researches may not have intended it, but the observation is fair. So, respectfully Alvin, I disagree with your point # 2.
Also, if the research has no interest at all in liberal or conservative agendas, then why would these honest researchers even include a politician? That seems a bit hard to explain and believe. So Point # 1 I completely disagree with. If you are correct, these researchers erred in including a popular politician in their study.
Who paid for this research?
As for the “less fully human,” did the researches include that language or not? If they did, then our satire and humor about aliens is fine. Alvin, you need to lighten up a bit, the alien thing was clearly and obviously intended as humor. Surely you don’t mean point # 4 to suggest seriously that we believe the researchers meant Palin is an Alien? C’mon. No one believes there actually is a Planet Pretty, my friend. You seem to be taking this awfully personally. At least you have to admit that the conclusion, if it said that, was poorly worded at best.
People did talk about Buff Bam, good looking Clinton, JFK and Gephart. All of that was viewed as okay to do. However, as covered to death by the media during the election, it was viewed as awful to talk about the good looks of Palin. The main point of the article is to point out this hypocrisy. People notice the appearance of male and female candidates and, no doubt, some vote in favor of the ones they find more attractive.
You are always welcome here and we appreciate the good points and criticisms you offered. We posted them promptly. Thank you.
- Peter
PS – We (includes ME) should all be more careful in calling people we don’t know “idiots.” Some think reporters and bloggers and corporate CEO’s are idiots. Others think college professors and researchers are idiots. It’s possible that none of that is accurate or fair.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Since the study did have political conclusions, it would also be of interest to know how all of the researches voted. I doubt they would share that.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
I made a mistake in citing Hot Air, it was the Atlanta Journal. Alvin, you should read the other two posts linked “With Obama, Sexism is Okay” and “Palin is Hot, Clinton is Not”…don’t judge them by their titles!
March 7th, 2009 at 7:25 am
I would just like to comment on your comments about my comments.
1. The experimenters political affiliation has NOTHING to do with the results of an experimental study. What matters is participant’s responses to the materials presented and the statistics based off of those. Regadless of what was found (say, everyone thought Palin was amazing), the results would be reported (experimenters report WHAT IS and WHAT THEY FOUND not WHAT THEY FEEL LIKE or WANT TO FIND or WHAT SHOULD BE). So not only would be reporting their political affiliation make no sense, it would be frowned upon with the context of an academic publication.
2. The researchers included Palin because, in their words, they were interested in the effect of objectification on perceptions of women (not on objectification of politicians). And, they needed someone well known. Palin was included for no political reasons at all (i.e. a political agenda). Including her did allow them to further test the effects of objectifying a women on her potential career success (being voted for). So in that sense, they drew a comclusion based on the voting intentions DV based on their data. But it isn’t a “political conclusion” in the sense that they wished to endorse liberalism or conservatism or to praise or attack Palin. Does this distinction make sense, because you were really missing it before? It really is nonesense, because I have seen these authors be accused of being both anti palin and pro palin in various blogs. Curious really how people make these guesses based on a quantitative experimental study(although if it was a qualitative study this would be a fair question) when this has nothing to do with the outcome.
3. The study wasn’t funded by anyone or organization. As part of their courses, students at leading research universities (like USF) are often required to participate in research. So, these students were there for course credit and it their responses are toally anonymous and confidential (e.g., when they are done we take their packet and have no clue who that packet goes to 1 day later). The researchers are paid for being faculty (or grad student) at the University. They are funded through teaching and, in this case, unrelated government grants to examine the role of death fear/awareness in people’s willingness to engage in healthy behavior (further proof it isn’t about a plotical agenda is that this is the only academic publication of Goldenberg’s, out of like 50, that has to do with politics at all. Both of their primary research interests are the effects of death salience (Heflick on its effect on religion/spirituality and Goldenberg on health and the body).
4. A similar study on Obama would be interesting. But, Obama wasn’t included (I assume), because the paper was on the objectification of women. It wasn’t “the effect of objectification on political leaders.” If the researchers aren’t interested in males beig objectificatied, then why in the world are they obligated to do that study? And I assume they are more interested in females being objectified because study after study after study shows that females TEND to be more objectified than males and when they are, it has more negative effects for the female.
5. The authors cannot send you the article because it is still in press in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and that would be copyright disaster. If you want to see it, you can (a) pay for online through the journal (which ironically, the authors get no money from) or (b) find someone in at a university who has access to practically every academic journal through their library online (that has paid the fee). Go to “psychinfo” and then type in some keywords. You’ll find it there.
6. Ok, so maybe idiots was a bit harsh. Like O’Reilly, I suspect the innaccurate conclusions bloggers are making up about this study and its authors has more to do with radical worldview defense than a lack of intelligence. So yeah, I guess people just need to see that the findings are what they ACTUALLY FOUND, not what they wanted to find.
7. Regarding Jolie, as I have said before, the primary purpose of the experimental (controlled setting and variables) study was to test the effects of objectifying women on how people percieve the women. So, the main interest was to see if objectifying each of these women lead participants (relative to participants that wrote about them as a person) to view these women as less competent and human. Jolie is a woman, so I think she fits the bill. So in sum, it wasn’t about comparing Jolie to Palin. It was about finding the effects of objectification on two different women who hold different roles in society. By using a non-political figure, the results of the study become more generalizable to women everywhere (it would be medicore science at best to only use one women and also not replicate the findings).
Ok, so that is that.
March 7th, 2009 at 7:34 am
One more thing:
1. You note that people objectify men and they vote for who they find more attractive. If you mean attractive as in “who they like best and think will do the best job” then you obviously right. No one would vote for who they didn’t find most attractive in that sense.
If, however, you mean physically attractive (looks), then you are making stuff up without any data. And not only that, there is causal experimental data contradicting you directly. Hmmm…so where does the burden of prood lie?
People do objectify men, but like I said, study after study shows not as much as females. So the media clearly wasn’t focused on Obama’s looks (although some) as much as Palin’s. Or even H.Clinton’s. This doesn’t mean these women can’t win. They clearly do. And the authors themselves note over and over and overthat there are many factors that contribute to voting choice. They make no gross judgments about the significance of objectification VS. other factors. So for instance, Dems voted for Obama no matter what. Clearly, their values and beliefs overrode the appearance manipulation. And people still said they would vote for McCain Palin. So it (objectification) plays a role, yes, but of course other factors play a bigger role in voting in most cases.
I am going to be hard-pressed to ever trust journalists/bloggers again. This distortion/jumping to conclusions/misunderstanding of science and the experimental method is just unreal to me.
March 7th, 2009 at 7:40 am
Re the humanness thing. Levels of humanness aren’t typically thought of/discussed by people. So it is very difficult, I imagine, to state a finding based on it concisely and clearly. All anyone has access to (well the reporters have access too) is the abstract, which for this journal has like a 150 word limit. So they need to be concise and try to be clear.
In the actual article, they outline what they mean by “human essence,” how it is measured and past research on the concept. It can be roughly (and I mean roughly) translated as the opposite of dehumanization, but it has to do with specifically seeing someone as more human relative to robotic or automatic (e..g, an object). This distinction between the other form of dehumanization (or infrahumanization as it is called because it differs from dehumanization) was noted by Nick Haslam, and is in contrast to the other form of infrashumanization, which is viewing humans as more animalistic and less human (such as when calling enemy soldiers “snakes” and “beasts.”
I can’t believe I am spending so much time replying to this.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Alvin,
Thanks for you comments and intelligent insights. I’m not sure how you know so much about this study, but appreciate your thoughts and more calm response. You do give the researchers an awful lot of credit for being honest and only sticking to the data. That may be the case. However, as scientists know, not everyone in their club is honest. You know that there are those looking for a certain result and that these results can be purchased. I am not suggesting this happened at all in this case. I doubt it did. However, I would be willing to bet these researchers voted for Obama. We are who we are, sir,…and who we are shades how we look at things. Scientists have been proven wrong time and time again. It would be just as easy to say “I am going to be hard pressed to ever trust a scientist again” as you said about bloggers. I understand completely what you say about the facts being the facts and that the researchers did not bend the data in any way. That may be the case. It’s also the case that many women confessed they voted for Clinton because he was a hottie. Is that scientific? No. You’re right. Not everyone thinks like a scientist or views the world as you and they do. Scientists have also worked together to say the global warming sky is falling. Science or no science, this will be proven wrong in the near future. You’re a smart guy and you make great points. Come back anytime.
March 8th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Well it looks like we are having a two man convo here!
Wow, what a difference in calmness/rationality/reasoning/fairness between your original article and your comments to my comments. Amazing.
I wholly agree that it is very hard in a lot of cases to discern good, solid science from people trying to prove points that use science to justify their stance. I assue you though, that in the case of Jamie and Nathan, there is no way they slanted the data. As someone close to both of them (a USF psychologist), I have worked closely with them since Nathan entered the program to work with Jamie 3 years ago.
I am not saying that other people don’t slant data. But a key difference here, besides the fact that it is them, is that the study wasn’t designed to even include poltical variables. That was way down on the list. As the authors have said repeatedly, the primary focus was to test how women are percieved by others when being judged solely(mostly/more) on their appearance before being rated on competence/humanity.
I know it might seem hard to fathom why they included Palin if it wasn’t political motivation. I am not entirely sure, but the study design required writing about Palin’s personality (or Jolie’s) for 25% of the population. They needed to have females people knew enough about to do this. And again, I dont know why they didnt choose a less attractive female also. But sheesh, you can’t do everything at once. They are, however, planning a follow up with various levels of attractive women.
Re the data being proven wrong, that is pretty much impossible unless someone can get access to their data and demonstrate that they did not perform fair science (e.g., skewed the numbers etc). Further, the results of this study are based on past work ( that has also been based on work prior to that) all support similar conclusions based on their data. It is impossible for all of this research (done for years) that is similar to Heflick and Goldenberg’s to be part of some political conspiracy when NONE of the previous empirical work in this area looked at politics (let alone Palin).
In the field of experimental social psychology (Goldenberg and Heflick’s) any work is reviewed by several reviewers and an editor in the field who have expert knowledge on past research and methodology and statistics. These reviewers and editor do not accept most studies (the rejection rate for JESP is pretty high, so even good work gets rejected). And even when they do, the authors have to address a laundry list of concerns the editor/reviewers have and work in their suggestions. If they dont do this adequately, they are still rejected by the journal.
In closing, the study has sad findings. Politics aside, it is disheartening for Palin or any woman to be percieved more negatively because people are focusing so highly on her appearance. This is a hindrance to Palin and all women, and this realization, and the understanding of it, was the authors primary reason for the study. This sad fact is, unfortunately, getting lost in a heap of political crossfire that has nothing to do with the study’s findings.
Maybe Palin will one day be President. The authors would never say that their findings eliminate this possibly. However, the fact that she is a woman who gets a lot of attention for her appearance, coupled with the study’s findings, suggest that, sadly, their will be forces outside of her control (objectification) working against her. So of course, she could still win, just like anyone can overcome hindrances to being voted for. It is only one factor. People overcome hindrances all of the time, but that doesn’t mean they still do not have an influence.
March 8th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
It’s also disheartening that good appearance is viewed as a positive for men like Obama, Clinton and Gephart…while being a negative for Palin. That’s the point of our article…to point out the hypocrisy there. That’s the headline: Palin Too Pretty? Oh C’mon!
Wait….did we just agree? Scary. (kidding)
March 9th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Amazing what happens when people discuss things! Common ground becomes inevitable.
The experimental/causal research on males actually shows that for high status jobs, male appearance is less important than female appearance for getting jobs. But you might be right that once they have the job, male attractivemess is a great thing to have (certainly being hideous wouldnt help).
Comparing men to women here though, is very difficult. Even if a male is being focused on for that reason, they arent as valued for their appearance, or at least, it isn’t as central to how people feel/think about them. So in a sense, if males were truly objectified in the sense males are, they probably would have the same negative consequences. But in very few cases does that actually occur.
I am not a Palin supporter by any stretch, but I still find it very sad that she faces obstacles that males do not.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Also, I can get a copy from Nathan Heflick of when he was on the michael smerconish radio show if you want to listen to it.
It lays out the researchers side pretty well.