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Welcome to the Double X Gab Fest for Thursday, January 26th, the Weasel Face edition.

I'm Hannah Rosen, editor of Double X. I am in the DC studio, and I'm joined today in the New York

studio by Jessica Gross, also an editor of double X. Hi, Jess.

Hey, Hannah.

And also Noreen Malone, who is a staff writer for New York Magazine's Daily Intel. Hello, Noreen.

Hey, Hannah.

Today we're going to talk about three subjects. The first is whether looks matter in politics.

A host of new studies show that they do, but not in exactly the way that we all think. The second is we're going to talk about why women in groups get a little stupider than they are in other situations. And finally, we're going to talk about the mother of all mommy bloggers. That's Heather Armstrong, also known as Deuce, who announced this week that she and her husband were getting separated. So let's start with looks and politics. This is a subject I thought was going to be

kind of stupid, but it turns out to be really interesting because a lot of people have been

basically mapping faces, types of faces, and they've divided them up the way, as our writer,

Libby Copeland said this week, 19th century phrenologists, this person has a threatening face, that person has a competent face. And mind you, it has absolutely nothing to do with their personality. And they have people judge these faces. And sometimes they're faces of real candidates or approximations of real candidates and see if those candidates are going to win the election. And, you know, people are

vastly right about the people who are going to win the election. They generally pick the stock face that is

competent as the face that's going to win the election. So it's kind of dispiriting, but really,

really interesting. Noreen, can you talk a little bit more about, you know, what's competent face? Do you have

competent face? So you automatically think that it's going to be the most attractive person who seems

competent, right? In almost every field, studies show that attractive people have an advantage.

And there have been studies showing that the taller politicians have an advantage. Those studies

aren't new. But what is new is a 2005 study by a Princeton psychologist,

Alexander Todorov, whose name I probably just butchered, on what this competent face exactly means in politics.

And basically, it's masculine but approachable with a square jaw, high cheekbones, and large eyes.

So if you look at the GOP fields, that basically is what Bit Romney looks like. And then

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