Most of you said the Trump supporter would win. That’s because you are reading this blog, and a lot of Trump supporters come here. But my educated guess is that persuasion is also at work. Trump’s language and imagery is all “big and beautiful and great.” His buildings are big and powerful. Trump is a big guy in a power suit wearing powerful clothing. He projects power, intentionally.Clinton is more about fighting for the weaker members of society. Even her logo looks like a sign pointing to a hospital.
Source: Power, Persuasion, and Attractiveness | Scott Adams Blog
You should be reading Scott Adams’ blog. He’s one of the best writers in the world in my opinion. I think I’ve modeled a lot of my style from his.
Anyway.
In this piece he talks about how he asked his Twitter followers if they would find a Clinton or Trump supporter more attractive. Here were his results:
Scott goes into this elaborate sort of explanation about attractiveness and persuasion and all that. I think it’s an elaborate explanation beard in need of a shave from an Occam razor.
Physical attraction is a primal thing, and Trump supporters tend to be more primal. The men tend to be more manly, and the women tend to be more girly.
End of story.
Liberals blur these lines. The women are more masculine, and the men are more effeminate. Not in bad ways. In fact, it’s just both sides moving to a neutral center. It’s a good thing in my opinion, although I have a more elaborate opinion on that which I’ll leave for another time.
The point, however, is that extremes of masculinity and femininity are more likely to be attractive at a surface, primal level than someone who’s all neutral and nuanced.
In college there were always these extremely conservative, nasty, hateful Republican girls who were super gorgeous but with completely abhorrent opinions and views of the world. And even the most liberal guys had to admit that they were super attractive.
But that wasn’t the crazy part.
The crazy part was that if you asked them if they’d be just as attracted to the same girl if she were a super-smart liberal chick, the answer was usually no.
I think the reason is that the conservative girl usually had submissive views and placed men above themselves and took that traditional feminine role. This intellectually turns off most liberal guys, but somehow their loins betrayed them.
And perhaps the same happens with guys seen by women, which shows up in the Twitter numbers. Perhaps they’re showing that despite our higher natures, some portion of men and women are drawn to the STRONG/PRETTY paradigm of the past.
And given Trump’s platform and opinions, it should fail to surprise that this is popular with his supporters.
That’s my read.
