Facing the Electorate: Computational Approaches to the Study of Nonverbal Communication and Voter Impression Formation

Abstract

Politicians have strong incentives to use their communication to positively impress and persuade voters. Yet, one important question that persists within the fields of political science, communication, and psychology is whether appearance or substance matters more during political campaigns. To a large extent, this appearance vs. substance question remains open and, crucially, the notion that appearance can in fact effectively sway voter perceptions is consequential for the health of democracy. This study leverages advances from the fields of machine learning and computer vision to expand our knowledge on how nonverbal elements of political communication influence voters immediate impressions of political actors. We rely on video from the 4 th Republican Party presidential debate held on 10 November 2016, as well as continuous response approval data from a live focus group (n=311; 36,528 reactions), to determine how the emotional displays of political candidates influence voter impression formation. Our results suggest that anger displays can positively influence viewers' real-time evaluations. Happiness displays, on the other hand, are much less effective in eliciting a response from the viewing public, while fear displays were extremely rarely projected by the candidates of the debate under study.

Examining the Influence of Politicians’ Emotional Appeals on Vote Choice using a Visualized Leader Choice Task

“…However, while a smile generally works, under some conditions angry expressions may work as well (van Knippenberg and van Kleef, 2016). Recent experimental research, for example, suggests that expressions of anger of politicians during debates engage citizens and increases support and political participation (Boussalis and Coan, 2021;Stapleton and Dawkins, 2022;Weber, 2013). We suggest context may be critical here.…”

“…We do this by analyzing how the emotional components of appeals, specifically facial expressions (e.g., happy/angry/neutral face) and tone of the message (e.g., positive/negative/neutral), influence vote choice alongside substantive components of appeals such as the issues or slogans presented, and the issue positions taken by candidates in these appeals. In doing so, we bridge insights from several disciplines: the psychology literature on emotions (e.g., Van Kleef, 2009, 2010Homan et al, 2022), first impressions and leadership (e.g., Todorov et al, 2005;Laustsen and Petersen, 2016a;Van Kleef, 2010), communication science work on the emotions communicated by politicians (e.g., Boussalis and Coan, 2021;Gabriel and Masch, 2017), and the political science literature on the predictors of vote choice (e.g., Lipset and Rokkan, 1967;Campbell et al, 1960;van der Brug et al, 2007). In the next sections we present preregistered hypotheses about how facial expressions, tone, issue agreement and issue salience predict vote choice in our leader choice experiments.…”

“…First, we start with the persuasive effects of politicians' emotional expressions, in which the common wisdom is that "smiling works". This is not just an election campaign mantra, but backed up by observational and experimental studies that show that politicians who smile receive more votes (Horiuchi et al, 2012;Masch et al, 2021), more positive evaluations (Gabriel and Masch, 2017;Boussalis and Coan, 2021;Sullivan and Masters, 1988), and are seen as more attractive, trustworthy and competent (Todorov et al, 2008;Zebrowitz, 2017;Montepare and Dobish, 2003;Oosterhof and Todorov, 2008) compared to angry or neutral-looking politicians. In general, in most cultures, smiles are more prevalent on election posters than angry faces (Horiuchi et al, 2012;Masch et al, 2021).…”

Populism and emotions: a comparative study using Machine Learning

“…Disentangling varying types of emotions predominant in the political discourse of a specific type of party or ‘party families’, such as populists, or varieties of populism, may be important given that emotions have been found to be ‘key strategic styles’ for attracting voters attention ( ibid. , Boussalis and Coan, 2021 3 ). Moreover, looking at the populist phenomenon in terms of its communication style with a focus on emotions seems particularly relevant as it may affect the overall political communication of a political system ( ibid ., Ernst et al , 2019 a , 2019 b ).…”