Political Emotions Shape Preferences for Leaders’ Facial Traits: Anger Favors Dominance, Fear Favors Trustworthiness

Past work shows that conservatives prefer more dominant-looking political leaders, whereas liberals prefer more trustworthy-looking ones. We extend this by showing that, beyond partisanship, discrete political emotions independently shape preferences for leaders’ facial traits. A balanced sample of U.S. Republicans and Democrats identified the political issue that made them most angry or most afraid and then chose which leader would best address that issue using computer-generated faces varying in dominance and trustworthiness. Participants chose a more dominant and less trustworthy-looking leader more often when angry (49.5 percent) than when fearful (46.5 percent). Mechanistically, anger shifted choices toward more dominant-looking leaders by increasing reliance on dominance cues and reducing reliance on trustworthiness cues, whereas fear selectively increased reliance on trustworthiness cues. These findings show that political emotions exert distinct influences on leader evaluation with implications for democratic decision-making and electoral choices.