Republican Women Look More Feminine

This is no surprise to any guy with an active pair.

Republican congresswomen appear more "feminine" than their Democrat counterparts, according to a new study by UCLA psychology researchers.

"Female politicians with stereotypically feminine facial features are more likely to be Republican than Democrat, and the correlation increases the more conservative the lawmaker's voting record," said study author Colleen M. Carpinella, a UCLA graduate student in psychology, in an article posted to the UCLA Newsroom website.


So what makes a woman "stereotypically feminine?" 

Certainly, individuals are easily biased by outside factors not related to facial characteristics, including hair style, application of cosmetics, jewelry or clothing style, said Kerri Johnson, the study's senior author and an assistant professor of communication studies and psychology at UCLA. For this reason, the researchers used a computer program that was "immune to those influences." 

The program, called FaceGen, allows the researchers to measure more than 100 subtle dimensions including the shape of the jaw, the location of eyebrows, the placement of cheek bones, the shape of eyes and the contour of the forehead, to create a score ranging from -40 (highly male-typed) to +40 (highly female-typed). 

For the study, the researchers had FaceGen analyze the portraits of members of the 111th House of Representatives, measuring how closely the facial features of each face approached the average for their gender.