There may be a reason Mitt¹ Romney is a front-runner in the Republican presidential nomination² race that has nothing to do with his stance on immigration or Social Security, according to a study published on Tuesday. It's his height.

周二发布的一项研究指出，米特•罗姆尼在美国共和党总统候选人提名的角逐中领先也许有一个原因，而且这一原因与他在移民或社保问题上的立场毫无关系。这个原因就是他的身高。

There may be a reason Mitt Romney is a front-runner in the Republican presidential nomination race that has nothing to do with his stance on immigration or Social Security, according to a study published on Tuesday.
Americans, whether they know it or not, prefer taller leaders, a preference（偏向，倾向） that dates back to the dawn of the human race, said Texas Tech University political science professor Gregg R. Murray.

If Romney, who stands 6-feet 2-inches tall, becomes his party's nominee³, he may have a secret advantage over the 6-feet 1-inch Barack Obama going into the 2012 election, just like Obama had over the 5-feet 8-inches John McCain in 2008, Murray said.

"In evolutionary⁴ times, when people traveled in small groups and people competed for resources, the argument was that, when the leader of the other group was a big guy, the feeling of the group was, 'Hey, maybe we don't want to compete with these people for resources,'" Murray told the reporters on Tuesday.

He said that even though this is an "irrational⁵（不合理的） response" for 21st-century leadership selection, there is a "vestige⁶（残余） of evolutionary history" involved in political decisions.

Recent presidents have been taller than the average American man (now 5-feet 9-inches), according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush are both 6-feet 2-inches, and Ronald Reagan was 6-feet 1-inch. Still, George W. Bush (just under 6-feet) was shorter than his two opponents (Al Gore⁷, 6-feet 1-inch, and John Kerry, 6-feet 4-inches).

For the study, Murray asked nearly 500 students from both public and private universities, male and female, and from the United States and around the world, to draw their concept of a "typical citizen" and an "ideal national leader." Sixty-four percent drew the leader as taller than the citizen.

"Culture and environment alone cannot explain how a preference for taller leaders is a near-universal trait we see in different cultures today, as well as in societies ranging from ancient Mayans to pre-classical Greeks, and even animals," Murray said.

He said a preference for taller leaders reflects an "evolved psychological trait, independent of any cultural conditioning."

Although the preference for taller male leaders is present in both men and women, Murray said, the preference does not enter into subconscious⁸ decision-making when both candidates are women, or when a man and a woman are running against each other.