Then-US President Bill Clinton laughs as introductions are made in the East Room of the White House during a 2001 awards ceremony. Listening to candidates debate may not be the best way of guessing who will win an election. A study by two US universities found that people were better at predicting election winners solely on the candidates' appearance rather than hearing what they have to say. "We found that snap decisions based on charisma are a good predictor of election outcomes," research co-author Daniel Benjamin of Dartmouth College said in a statement. Moreover, co-author Jesse Shapiro of the University of Chicago said: "Hearing what they say makes you worse at predicting." The study used 10-second long silent video clip extracts of debates from 58 gubernatorial elections between 1988 and 2002. Some 264 subjects participated in the study. The video clips did not give the candidate's name or party affiliation, and the segments were always of debates between two white male candidates to eliminate race and gender wild cards . Based on this limited information, the volunteers were asked to guess which candidate had won. The study found that the subjects were quite good at guessing the winner. The research, however, was unable to determine which physical attributes gave a candidate the edge. "There is something mysterious about it," Shapiro said. "People's readings of physical attractiveness are not very predictive. It's who they think would win. It's not just who is good looking, it's something else." With the audio on, subjects were no better at predicting an outcome, Shapiro said. According to Benjamin, the research "may help to explain for example why experts forecasters, who are highly informed about and attentive to policy matters, have been found to perform no better than chance in predicting elections." The study, however, did not predict who had the charisma to win the races in Tuesday's US legislative and gubernatorial elections. 點擊查看更多雙語新聞 (AFP)

如果要預測選舉中哪位候選人會獲勝，其實不用聽他們的競選演說。 美國兩所大學所做的一項研究表明，單憑候選人的外表來預測選舉結果也比聽他們的演說要來得準。 研究報告的撰寫者之一、達特默斯大學的丹尼爾·本杰明在一份聲明中說：“我們發現，對候選人個人魅力的第一印象有助于預測選舉結果。” 研究報告的另一位撰寫者、芝加哥大學的耶西·夏皮羅說：“聽他們的演說反倒會影響判斷。” 研究人員將1988年至2002年間共58次州長競選的辯論錄像制作成10秒鐘的消聲視頻剪輯，并邀請264名調查對象參加了實驗。 視頻剪輯中沒有提供候選人姓名及其所屬黨派的信息，為了消除種族和性別方面的影響，所有片斷都是兩名男性白種候選人之間的辯論。 調查對象看完僅有10秒鐘的消聲錄像，就得猜出哪位候選人獲勝。結果發現，調查對象猜的都很準。 但是，這項研究并沒有發現哪種外表特征對于選舉獲勝特別有利。 夏皮羅說：“有些東西無法解釋。其實，外表也不是最關鍵的因素，除外表外，對候選人的直覺也很重要。” 他說，即使將錄像的音頻打開，也沒發現對調查對象的預測有什么幫助。 本杰明說，這項研究“可以解釋為什么預測專家雖然對候選人的競選綱領了如指掌，但他們在預測選舉結果時往往也是碰運氣。” 然而，這項研究沒有預測誰將贏得于本周二開始的中期國會選舉和州長選舉。 （英語點津姍姍編輯）