Over half of British Members of Parliament (MPs) were found to have overclaimed on their expenses in the 2009 expenses scandal. We conducted an exploratory analysis of whether the facial appearance of the MPs (N = 636) is associated with overclaiming, as research has found that facial appearance is correlated with behavioural outcomes. Participants (N = 4,727) previously unfamiliar with the MPs made trait ratings (physically attractive, charismatic, criminal, competent, financially greedy, honest, likeable, organised, physically dominant, and sincere) of each politician’s face. The latent factor structure indicated the traits could be grouped into the three broad factors identified in previous work: criminality (the traits criminal, financially greedy, and physically dominant), attractiveness (the traits physically attractive, charismatic, honest, likeable, and sincere), and competence (competent and organised). We found more attractive MPs tended to overclaim less, as did more criminal-looking MPs. But more competent-appearing politicians tended to overclaim more. We relate these findings to theories of moral licensing and moral consistency and discuss the limitations and context-specific nature of our findings.

在 2009 年的开支丑闻中，超过一半的英国国会议员 (MPs) 被发现夸大了他们的开支。我们对议员 ( N = 636)的面部外观是否与夸大其词进行了探索性分析 ，因为研究发现面部外观与行为结果相关。 以前不熟悉国会议员的参与者（N = 4,727）对每个政治家的面孔进行了特征评级（身体吸引力、魅力、犯罪、能干、经济上贪婪、诚实、讨人喜欢、有组织、身体优势和真诚）。潜在因素结构表明，这些特征可以分为之前工作中确定的三大因素：犯罪（犯罪特征、财务贪婪和身体优势）、吸引力（身体上有吸引力、有魅力、诚实、讨人喜欢和真诚的特质）和能力（有能力和有条理）。我们发现更具吸引力的国会议员往往会夸大其词，而更具犯罪色彩的国会议员也是如此。但更有能力的政客往往会夸大其词。我们将这些发现与道德许可和道德一致性理论联系起来，并讨论我们发现的局限性和特定背景的性质。