Face the Facts: Researchers Predict Selection of the Next Pope 12 March 2013

Face the facts: Researchers predict selection of the next pope 12 March 2013

spiritual principles," Stevens said. "But participants didn't seem to have a problem making the judgments we asked of them. No one wrote in stating that they couldn't possibly decide on who might be the next pope just by looking at the face."

Stevens and Vishton started with a list of 20 leading candidates, based on names reported by various media sources. Photos of the candidates' faces were gathered from freely available online sources. Participants rated the attractiveness, health, and trustworthiness of each face, as well as judging the likelihood that each individual would be selected as Psychology Professors Jennifer A. Stevens (l) and Peter the next pope. M. Vishton (R) are the authors of the study, "Predicting the Selection of the Next Pope Based on Face Photos." O'Malley was rated highest on a composite scale of They are seen surrounded by images of Archbishop these ratings. Sean O’Malley (courtesy of George Martell/Pilot New Media)the cardinal predicted by the survey to be selected the next pope. Credit: Stephen Salpukas

Could you pick the next pope out of a lineup just by looking at his face? Two William & Mary professors say "yes."

A study conducted by psychologists Jennifer A. Stevens and Peter M. Vishton predicts that American Cardinal Sean O'Malley, 69, the archbishop of Boston, will be selected as the next pope of the Roman Catholic Church when the conclave of cardinals meets in Rome later this month.

When humans make decisions about others, they may consider a wide range of information—experience, training, beliefs, etc.—Stevens noted. Prior research, however, makes it clear that people are also strongly, unconsciously influenced by other simple factors, The study was based on an online survey of over such as the appearance of the face, she said. 500 people. The participants in the six-minute survey were recruited via the Amazon Mechanical "The pope is a figurehead with specific ethical and Turk system, which pays participants a small fee in

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return for their participation, in this case 20 cents individual will be selected as the next pope, the each. The participants responded from all over the ratings were most strongly correlated with ratings of world. About half of the survey responses came attractiveness, Vishton said. from North America and half from Asia. About half of the data came from participants who reported "It's almost as if participants were rating the same that they were Christians, and about half reported thing twice, even though the two questions were that they were Hindus. very different. Of course, being charismatic and attractive may impact the performance of a pope in While these groups of participants were very inspiring Catholics around the world, but it is different from one another in many ways, they were surprising that the two are so strongly correlated." remarkably similar in terms of their ratings of the faces. The overall ranking of the cardinals was "If we were going to hedge our predictions, Erdo essentially the same across these two groups, the would be our next choice," said Vishton. "He and researchers said. O'Malley were nearly tied in our survey. Sandri was close behind in third, and Scola was judged the Prior research has suggested that characteristics of most likely to be named Pope. If none of these four faces greatly influence human decisions about is selected—O'Malley, Erdo, Sandri, or Scola—then hiring, voting and assessment of others in general, perhaps face appearance doesn't play as big a role Vishton noted. If these face-based processes in this selection process as in others." influence the conclave of cardinals the same way that they influence others, it is likely that one of the For Stevens, the experimental approach exposes top-rated candidates in the survey will be selected human's intuitive and automatic biases. as the next pope. "We make split-second judgments about a person Most of this data, however, have come from based on how she or he looks all of the time," she laboratory studies of simulated decision-making said. "The interesting part is that these decisions processes, he said. are often the same as those made after we've gathered lots of information about a person." "We wanted to test the limits of these theories in a real-world decision process with real faces. We More information: also wanted to make a point of predicting some pmvish.people.wm.edu/PopeFaces.pdf event before it actually occurred, rather than after the fact."

The study found clear front-runners in each of the Provided by The College of William & Mary four ratings categories (see figure 1). The most attractive candidate, according to the survey respondents, was O'Malley. He was also rated as the most trustworthy. The leader in the health category was Cardinal Luis Tagle, 56, of the Philippines. Cardinal Angelo Scola, 72, of Italy scored highest on the stand-alone question of who is likely to be the next pope. But overall, O'Malley was rated highest on average, with Cardinal Peter Erdo, 61, of Hungary close behind. Also close behind was Argentinian Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, 70, who scored third overall, while not winning any particular category.

When asking people to rate the likelihood that an

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