Facing the Electorate: Computational Approaches to the Study of Nonverbal Communication and Voter Impression Formation
Boussalis, C; Coan, TG
Date: 27 October 2020
Journal
Political Communication
Publisher
Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Publisher DOI
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. ...
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 4th 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
Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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