Presidential debate learning as a gateway to opinion articulation, communication intentions, and information seeking

Jennings, Freddie J.; Bramlett, Josh C.; Kenski, Kate; Villanueva, Isabel

doi:10.1080/10511431.2021.1949543

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Polls indicate that debate performances can make or break a candidate's election (Tarrance, 2016). Political debates are the most-watched political events (Gottfried et al, 2017; Keeter, 2016)—a major means of learning about candidates during a campaign (Jennings et al, 2021). In a meta-analysis of 87 studies of presidential debates, Benoit et al (2003) found that the largest effect size of any variable in general election debates was for “perceptions of candidates’ character” (i.e., trustworthiness and honesty).…”

Section: The Impact Of Language Intensity In Political Debatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Intense Language Hurts a Politician's Trustworthiness: Voter Norms of a Political Debate via Language Expectancy Theory

Clementson

Zhao

Park

2023

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

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Incivility in U.S. political debates hurts democracy. But uncivil language is more entertaining, exciting, and arousing than civil language. Given the contradictory relationship between people's general aversion and the media attention to popularized incivility, insight can be gained through examining politicians’ language intensity, a relatively common yet scarcely explored phenomenon in political debates. In a preregistered multiple-message experimental design with an original stimulus filmed for this study, participants ( n = 538 registered U.S. voters) watch a debate featuring a real politician (with a real journalist moderating the debate). Participants are randomly assigned to high- or low-intensity language conditions. Inspired by language expectancy theory (LET), a multiple-mediation model is tested, whereby language intensity decreases a politician's trustworthiness through intense language being more uncivil than low-intensity language which is associated with voters’ normative expectancies. Discussion concerns the practical implications for politicians’ debate strategy and theoretical ramifications of LET via communication accommodation theory.

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Section: The Impact Of Language Intensity In Political Debatesmentioning

confidence: 99%