President Donald Trump has insisted the mainstream media is pushing "FAKE NEWS!" and has called journalists the "enemy of the people."

What follows might give him a reason to rethink that opinion.

Trump's success at winning votes -- and the same success of his fellow Republican politicians, who control both houses of Congress -- just might be due to their physical attractiveness.

Jan-Erik Lonnqvist, a professor of social psychology at the University of Helsinki, published a study last month that concludes conservative voters in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere value good looks in political candidates more than liberal voters. The study falls into line with a plethora of earlier research that shows good-looking people tend to earn more money and achieve greater success than those of average looks.

To be sure, the new study's methodology, being social science rather than hard science, is a bit squishy. Study participants looked at ideology-focused political publications and rated "physical attractiveness, placement on the continuum Right-Left, and placement on the continuum Conservative-Liberal."

Trump, often described by journalists as good looking and even "dashing" when he was an up-and-coming real-estate developer in the 1970s, has long understood the power of beauty. "The bathing suits got smaller and the heels got higher and the ratings went up," he once said of his revamping of the Miss Universe pageant.

But beauty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder -- and even more so in politics than in beauty pageants. So what some voters consider physical attractiveness is simply better grooming, Lonnqvist concludes. A typical "right-leaning" political candidate, it seems, tends to excel at combing their hair, while a typical left-leaning one tends to be Bernie Sanders.

Lonnqvist finds it "worrying" that conservative voters attach a "high degree of importance ... to looks in political elections." And, perhaps giving away his own political viewpoint, he theorizes that it's because they are "less sophisticated." He titled his study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, "Just Because You Look Good Doesn't Mean You're Right."

"One possible reason for the greater influence of looks on right-wing constituents could be that they are less informed," he said. "Previous research has also shown that conservative voters have a more concrete, perhaps less sophisticated way of thinking."

The study does throw a curveball -- and might explain why Trump decided he had to get into politics. If you're a conservative voter but haven't run for office, the research suggests, you're probably as ordinary looking as your liberal friends. A University of Helsinki press statement about the study makes clear that conservatives' dominance in the looks department "applies specifically to politicians and does not mean that right-leaning people on the whole are more attractive."

None of this, to be clear, necessarily means your better-looking colleagues at the office will be promoted over you. Especially if you've chosen the right profession. Says Lonnqvist:

"When it comes to a career in academia, looks do not appear to be of any great importance."

-- Douglas Perry