FACE-OFF.(The Talk of the Town)(Asian faces superimposed on white ones in Virginia Fields' mayoral campaign photo)

The recent flap over a doctored photograph released by the mayoral campaign of Virginia Fields, in which two Asian faces were superimposed on white ones, offers another little chunk of evidence for the case that, in politics, image is everything. At issue, ultimately, is whether it would have been more ethical for Fields, the Manhattan borough president, to have staged a live photo-op with multi-ethnic supporters at her side, instead of simply Photoshopping them in.

Yet maybe worrying about who is pictured with the candidate is missing the point, imagewise. According to a new study published in Science, first impressions of candidates' own faces may well be the determining factor in most elections. Specifically, what voters seem to be looking for--and discerning, in as little as a second--is an indication of competence, as distinct from attractiveness or trustworthiness or intelligence. The study was designed by a Princeton psychology professor named Alexander Todorov, who analyzed several hundred recent congressional races. He found that simply by flashing a pair of head shots before subjects' eyes, and asking them to identify the face that displayed the most competence, he could predict winners with about seventy-per-cent accuracy.

But is competence revealed in the cheekbones, the jawline, the fullness of the lips? An article that accompanied Todorov's study, written by Joann M. Montepare and Leslie Zebrowitz, the author of "Reading Faces: Window to the Soul?," suggests an answer: voters perceive "baby-facedness" (broad cheeks, small chin, big eyes) as a sign of incompetence, whereas "facial maturity" (jutting chin, furrowed brow, angular nose) connotes capability. "When images of former U.S. presidents Reagan and Kennedy were morphed to increase baby-facedness," the article says, "their perceived dominance, strength, and cunning decreased significantly." Joe Lieberman's crags and Arnold Schwarzenegger's squared-off mug, in other words, bode well; the billowing chins of Al Sharpton and the cherubic cheeks of John Edwards do not. The implications are far-reaching. Did Silvio Berlusconi's face-lift, for instance, do him any good? And what should we make of the John Kerry Botox rumors?

Here in New York the mayoral election looms. Granted, there are probably more electoral-prediction models by now than candidates for public office, and it's a safe bet that Michael Bloomberg will be reelected without consulting any of them. From a scientific perspective, however, the Democratic primary race presents a reasonable test case for the ...