Good morning.

  • Morphing the candidates.

    WashPost columnist Richard Morin jots this morning that according to an experiment conducted by the paper and Stanford U.’s director of political communications, Shanto Iyengar, the more candidates looked like Hillary or McCain, the more they are loathed. No shinola.

    For the study, Iyengar and his collaborators created composite photo images that blended the facial characteristics of a national political figure with those of a largely unknown woman and an unfamiliar man. The photos of five political luminaries were used: McCain, Clinton, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) and Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.).

    The photos of the five “targets” were morphed with the photos of two other politicians virtually unknown outside their home districts: Reps. Ed Case (D-Hawaii) and Mary Bono (R-Calif.). The result was a blended image of a man or a woman that was not recognizable as the target pol but still retained his or her essential features.

    Participants clicked into the experiment homepage and viewed the image composed of 20 or 40 percent of one target politician’s face blended with Bono or Case. They were informed the photo was of a candidate for the Senate named Paul Vaughn, or Paula Vaughn if the image was of a female. (They were asked at the end of the experiment whether candidate Vaughn resembled anyone. Virtually no one got it right.)

    They did such things as change the “composition of the face from 20 percent Clinton to 40 percent Clinton.” They found that this morphing did not have a positive effect, even when it was with such as former U. Texas cheerleader Kay Bailey Hutchinson or “the good-looking Bayh or Giuliani.”

    I know what you’re asking aloud, and I cannot answer. I have no idea why the WashPost did this when they are charged with gathering and dispensing news. I can assume that they were really drunk one night and some journalist thought it would be funny to try something goofy. They found the dude and Stanford who was happy to take their money for this crap.

    I wonder what would happen if they gave Hillary Mitt’s hair.