Verbal and nonverbal modality effects on impressions of political candidates: Analysis from the 1984 presidential debates

Judgments of communicative intent in conversation

“…(e.g., Argyle, Salter, Nicholson, Williams, & Burgess, 1970;DePaulo, Zuckerman, & Rosenthal, 1980;Friedman, 1978;Krauss, Apple, Morency, Wenzel, & Winton, 1981;Strahan & Zytowski, 1976). Using this paradigm, some researchers found that visual information is most influential (Patterson, Churchill, & Burger, 1992); some researchers found that verbal information is most influential (Cline, Atzat, & Holmes, 1972); and others found that the combination of verbal and nonverbal information was most useful (Archer & Akert, 1977). In contrast to these findings, Furnham, Trevethan, and Gaskell (1981) found no differences in person perception when comparing judgments under visual, vocal, verbal, and total cue contexts.…”

Effects of Nonverbal Behavior on Perceptions of Power Bases

“…In the present study, therefore, we examined whether facial expression (nervous vs. relaxed) affected perceptions of specific power bases. Previous researchers (Patterson, Churchill, Burger, & Powell, 1992) have investigated and described several forms of visual behavior such as blinking and gaze shifts (e.g., indirect vs. direct eye contact). In several investigations of interacting pairs, participants who gazed more at their partners were perceived as more potent or dominant (Thayer, 1969;Zimmerman, 1977).…”

Presidential speechmaking style: Emotional response to micro-expressions of facial affect

“…These facial expressions communicate the situation's importance to the viewer as if the speaker were present. In other words, more emotionally evocative messages, such as those presented by the leaders on television and face-to-face, can be expected to lead to higher levels of affective response by viewers and result in attitudinal change (Way and Masters 1996a, b;Schubert et al 2002), especially when compared to appeals that are written, audio-only or covered in a news report 1 (Schubert 1998;Patterson et al 1992). In sum, these studies suggest that personal delivery, communicating the leader's 1 Television news coverage introduces a confounding factor beyond the scope of this study; the effect of newscasters nonverbal delivery on viewer perceptions of and attitudes towards their leaders.…”