Gender Differences in Emotional Reactions to the First 2016 Presidential Debate

Fridkin, Kim L.; Gershon, Sarah Allen; Courey, Jillian; LaPlant, Kristina M.

doi:10.1007/s11109-019-09546-9

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Political leaders seek to garner favor among voters through their words, voices, and facial expression; these "hearts and minds" appeals shape voter evaluations (Carpinella et al 2016;Everitt, Best, and Gaudet 2016;Fridkin et al 2021). Nonverbal communicationsincluding facial displays and vocal pitch-are a key mechanism by which candidates convey emotions and, in turn, influence voter assessments regarding the acceptability of candidates for leadership positions.…”

Section: Nonverbal and Emotional Communication In Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies of debates demonstrate that voters obtain information about candidate traits and electability from on-stage exchanges, and debate performance can ultimately influence vote choice (Benoit, Hansen, and Verser 2003). Of importance for our work, scholars have shown that seeing and hearing debates shifts how people view the candidates (Druckman 2003;Fridkin et al 2021 The debate performance of candidates-and how voters react to those performances-are shaped by the gender composition of who is on stage. We are far from the first to evaluate how gender shapes the use of or response to emotions (e.g., Hess et al 2000), including in the political arena (e.g., Bauer 2015;Brooks 2011;2013;Masch and Gabriel 2020).…”

Section: Political Debates As Emotion-rich Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite considerable academic interest in the study of political debates (Boydstun et al 2014;Druckman 2003;Fridkin et al 2021;Nagel, Maurer, and Reinemann 2012), questions remain on how emotional displays translate into support among potential voters. Voters evaluate candidates not only on whether they express situationally-appropriate emotions (Brooks 2011) but also whether their emotions convey an ability to lead and to work with others Masch and Gabriel 2020).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Gender, Candidate Emotional Expression, and Voter Reactions During Televised Debates

et al. 2021

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Voters evaluate politicians not just by what they say, but also how they say it, via facial displays of emotions and vocal pitch. Candidate characteristics can shape how leaders use—and how voters react to—nonverbal cues. Drawing on role congruity expectations, we study how the use of and reactions to facial, vocal, and textual communication in political debates varies by candidate gender. Relying on full-length videos of four German federal election debates (2005–2017) and a minor party debate, we use video, audio, and text data to measure candidate facial displays of emotion, vocal pitch, and speech sentiment. Consistent with our expectations, Angela Merkel expresses less anger than her male opponents, but she is just as emotive in other respects. Combining these measures of emotional expression with continuous responses recorded by live audiences, we find that voters punish Merkel for anger displays and reward her happiness and general emotional displays.

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Section: Nonverbal and Emotional Communication In Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Political Debates As Emotion-rich Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Gender, Candidate Emotional Expression, and Voter Reactions During Televised Debates

et al. 2021

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“…In contrast, our results suggest that Fiorina's anger displays tend to decrease viewer support, which is relevant to an ongoing debate on whether counterstereotypical gender behavior among political elites leads to disproportionate penalties at the ballot box (see Hitchon et al 1997, Brooks 20112013, Bauer 2017, Fridkin et al 2019, Cassese and Holman 2019. This tentative and objectively narrow result suggest that aggressive displays (or even any emotive signal more generally) by female candidates-at least among Republican contenders-might be counterproductive.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 44%

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

Boussalis

Coan

2020

Political Communication

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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.

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“…Previous studies indicated that females are more likely to report fear experiences because of stereotypes that suggest it is socially undesirable for males to express fear (Brody, Lovas, & Hay, 1995). Although scholars have indicated that females are more likely to express and report their emotions, recent studies showed no gender differences in fear expression (Fridkin, Gershon, Courey, & LaPlant, 2019). Cultural differences in emotion perception are well established in the emotion-related literature (Fang, van Kleef, & Sauter, 2019).…”

Section: Fear Emotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fear-based health messages for Malay diabetes patients in Singapore

Kawaja¹

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v support and supplications. Taufik, Rachid, Jamal, Farouk, Riaz and Faisal have been my goto-men. Words cannot express my gratitude to my sister, Noor Aini. She has been the bedrock in my life. When our father passed away, she has assumed the role entirely and sacrificed herself for the family's benefit. I would not have been able to achieve the things I did without her. Thanks to my younger brother for his in-depth discussions in life and being a good friend. I dedicate my work to my four lovely children-Haney, Hud, Zainal Abidin and A'isyah, and my nephew, Muhammad, whom I consider as my own. I appreciate my wife; Wan Azrina does not seem to be fazed by the hassle of managing our four young children. She took over the dual role of being a mother and a father, especially towards the end of my thesis writing. Most of my friends tell me that I am lucky to have a "cool" mother. When I was in primary school, the vice-principal of Tao Nan School commended my mother because she would cook for my friends and took care of them before we go for our co-curricular activities. She continued this tradition until I was in college. My house was known as the "port" among my friends where they would come to chill-out. My mother has been supportive of everything I do and provides me with advice whenever I need one. I know in seclusion, she would supplicate and seek blessings for me. I know my late father has been doing the same. vi SUMMARY Diabetes is a major cause of death worldwide and ranks amongst killer diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases. The Malays with Type 2 diabetes were being investigated in this research as they are the most susceptible to the disease compared to the other ethnic groups in Singapore. Among the non-clinical intervention programmes, scholarly articles suggest that emotion-based health messages can be a powerful driver to promote health preservation attitudes and behaviours. The objective of this research was to investigate the influence of fear-based messages on patients' behaviours in managing their diabetes condition. To achieve this objective, the research was divided into three phases. In Phase I, forty stimuli were curated. Eight patients with diabetes and eight healthcare providers took part in two separate focus group discussions (FGDs) and a one-to-one interview to determine the appropriateness of the stimuli curated. In Phase II, 100 patients were recruited and asked to rank the stimuli according to three emotion metrics: valence, arousal and dominance. The metrics were derived from the standard Self-Assessment-Manikin (SAM). In Phase III, the rated stimuli were used in a 2 (high-threat, low-threat) x 2 (image, text) factorial design experiment, where 60 patients were recruited. The research findings indicated that varying the threat levels and manipulating the type of format (image or text) had no significant impact on Malay patients accepting the health messages. However, it was found that varying threat levels could influence message acceptance among Malay patients when mode...

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Gender Differences in Emotional Reactions to the First 2016 Presidential Debate

Cited by 11 publications

References 60 publications

Gender, Candidate Emotional Expression, and Voter Reactions During Televised Debates

Gender, Candidate Emotional Expression, and Voter Reactions During Televised Debates

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

Fear-based health messages for Malay diabetes patients in Singapore

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