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Judging politicians vs. everyone else

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UPI / LIDIA WASOWICZ, UPI Science Writer

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Mar 12, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/12/97

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<A HREF='http://www.clari.net/'>ClariNet</A> <CLARI-ITEM TYPE>story</CLARI-ITEM> <CLARI-ITEM SLUGWORD>US-PERSONALITY</CLARI-ITEM> from <CLARI-ITEM FROM>UPI / LIDIA WASOWICZ, UPI Science Writer</CLARI-ITEM> 
<H1><CLARI-ITEM HEADLINE>Judging politicians vs. everyone else</CLARI-ITEM></H1>
<CLARI-ITEM COPYRIGHT>Copyright 1997 by United Press International</CLARI-ITEM> / <CLARI-ITEM DATE>Wed, 12 Mar 1997 12:51:43 PST</CLARI-ITEM>
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 SAN FRANCISCO, March 12 (UPI) -- In a study of how Italians and
Americans perceive their politicians, national heroes and themselves,
Italian and U.S. researchers have come to some fascinating conclusions.
 While using the traditional five-point scale in judging the
personalities of sports figures or themselves, the study subjects threw
caution to the wind when it came to political candidates, rating them on
a much simplified two-point scale.
 The suspected reason, according to the report Wednesday in the
British journal Nature, is this is the brain's attempt at efficiency in
view of the onslaught of campaign material hurled its way at election
time.
 Says Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University in California, ``Voters
have devised an extraordinarily efficient -- not to say pragmatic -- way
of evaluating the personalities of political candidates. Rather than
assessing personalities according to the five-dimensional scale devised
by psychologists, they reserve for politicians a simplified two-
dimensional scale that helps them decide how to cast their votes.''
 Most researchers agree that the complexity of human personality can
be reduced to five basic factors. These are energy/extroversion;
friendliness; conscientiousness; emotional stability (not being
neurotic); and openness to experience.
 But when 2,088 Italians were asked to rate the personalities of
leading political candidates Silvio Berlusconi and Roman Prodi, sports
celebrity Alberto Tomba and TV personality Pippo Baudo -- as well as
themselves -- the results were startling.
 In general, respondents' personality portraits of themselves and
national celebrities were based on the standard five-dimensional scale.
 But, impressions of the personalities of political candidates boiled
down to just two dimensions -- no more than a cardboard cutout of the
real thing. These two were: energy/innovation, a blend of energy and
openness, and honesty/trustworthiness, a mixture of the other three
factors of friendliness, conscientiousness and emotional stability.
 The results were not confined to Italians. A smaller survey of 195 U.
S. college students showed the same discrepancy between how they
perceived themselves and sports stars like basketball's Magic Johnson
and how they rated President Bill Clinton and former presidential
candidate Bob Dole.
 Gian Vittorio Caprara of the University of Rome says that by adopting
a simplified method of judging political personalities, voters have
devised a ``cognitively efficient strategy'' that helps them to decide
how to cast their votes.
 The researchers say this strategy is, in part, the brain's defense
against the massive onslaught of campaign material and, in part, an
acquiescence to the simplistic, skin-deep impressions conveyed by
political campaigning.
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