Research considering the effect of Presidential speech making style shows individuals are likely to attend to and be emotionally affected by the facial expressions of leaders, especially those that are inappropriate for the context. In this study we tested how rapid and subtle expressions of facial affect (i.e., expressions of less than onesecond, often termed micro-expressions) in speeches by a political leader impacts participants' emotional state. We do this by removing seven brief expressions (less than onesecond) from a nearly twelve minute televised speech by President George H. W. Bush concerning the 1990 commitment of US military in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. FACS coding identified all these expressions as containing a component of smiling (lip corner puller: AU12), in some cases with the addition of other facial movements (sometimes associated with anger and/or disgust). Experiments carried out on 206 university undergraduates showed emotional state was altered as a result of these microexpressions when the control (unaltered speech) and experimental group (micro-expressions removed from speech) were compared. Specifically, participants who viewed the micro-expressions felt less threatened and less angry. Thus, facial expression (even very brief micro-expressions) can have a significant impact on the receiver of a political speech.

Public approval ratings of George W. Bush surged after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. This study used a quasi-experimental, within-respondents design to investigate the relative contribution of five factors to this classic rally effect: the stimulus event itself, Bush's speech that evening, media exposure, partisan support, and gender effects. Respondents were pretested on the morning of the attacks; one group was posttested immediately after the speech, another group 41 hours later. Stability of effects was examined through an additional study of Bush's 20 September 2001 speech to a joint session of Congress. The findings indicate that Bush's 11 September speech was the critical factor in this rally effect; none of the other factors contributed significantly.

Abstract. Supreme Court oral argument (OA) is one of many face-to-face settings of political interaction. This article describes a methodology for the systematic observation and measurement of behavior in OA developed in a study of over 300 randomly selected cases from the 1969-1981 terms of the u.S. Supreme Court. Five sources of observation are integrated into the OA database at the speaking turn level of analysis: the actual text of verbal behavior; categorical behavior codes; aspects of language use and speech behavior events; electro-acoustical measurement of voice quality; and content analysis of subject matter. Preliminary data are presented to illustrate the methodology and its application to theoretical concerns of the research project. Peterson, who has published on a wide variety of topics in biopolitics and political behavior, is Professor of Political Science at Alfred University. Glendon Schubert, Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, is a long-time and prolific student of judicial politics, constitutional law, and biopolitics.Stephen Wasby is Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York at Albany. His career has been devoted to the study of public law and judicial politics.A SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT of political behavior occurs through face-to-face interaction. The face-to-face setting is present when small groups meet, when candidates face off in debates, and when lawyers negotiate in the corridors of courthouses (Dorff and Steiner, 1981;Nardulli, Flemming and Eisenstein, 1984). The face-to-face setting cuts across levels of government from municipal councils to international summit meetings. It also cuts across time; the face-to-face setting was no doubt even more common in politics 50,000 years ago than it is today. Although a substantial proportion of face-to-face interactions is not accessible to political researchers, another substantial proportion is. Indeed, there is a rapidly expanding wealth of raw political data stored on videotape, awaiting the attention and curiosity of political scientists.' Advances in video recording and microcomputing technology have made the concept of systematic observation of face-to-face politics more physically practical and financially feasible for political researchers (J. N. Schubert, 1988). In contrast with other scientific disciplines in and out of the social sciences, political science has no tradition of direct, observational field research. A few political scientists, however, have begun to apply the theoretical and methodological approach of human ethology in observational studies of politics (Watts,

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The relationship between age and active-passive leadership style is analyzed with direct observational data describing the behavior of a sample of 24 mayors during issue discussion and debate on their councils over a one-year period of meetings. Activity, measured as a time-based rate of verbal participation, was found to increase with the age of leaders to a high in the midfifties, and to decline for older mayors in their sixties and seventies. Political experience interacted with age to affect activity. Inexperienced mayors displayed a less active style, regardless of age; but experienced mayors in their sixties and seventies had the least active style of all. These findings held up under control f or group size, political structure on the councils, and community characteristics.