Abstract: In political election context voters seem to make the competence trait inference and warmth trait inference from the candidates’ faces, which indicates that candidates’ faces affect voting behavior of voters. The appearance-based trait inferences, facial attractiveness, facial maturity, facial expression and facial familiarity play important roles in predicting electoral outcomes. Recently, research of behavior study on predicting the outcomes from candidates’ appearances has been expanded to study the neural mechanisms. For example, scanned by fMRI, activations were observed in the amygdala, insula and ventral anterior cingulate, when the subjects were making negative trait judgments and voting behavior. Whereas the subjects watching the winning candidates showed no differential brain activations. To find out the reason of the candidates’ face effect, researchers have explained it from cognitive and evolutional adapting view. Finally because there existed defect in experiment materials and contents of the previous researches, this also indicates the direction of future research.

Key words: competence trait, warmth trait, facial attractiveness, facial maturity, facial familiarity, facial expression