Patrick A Stewart, Elena Svetieva, Jeffrey K Mullins
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
This preregistered study replicates and extends studies concerning emotional response to wartime rally speeches and applies it to U.S. President Donald Trump's first national address regarding the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020. We experimentally test the effect of a micro-expression (ME) by Trump associated with appraised threat on change in participant self-reported distress, sadness, anger, affinity, and reassurance while controlling for followership. We find that polarization is perpetuated in emotional response to the address which focused on portraying the COVID-19 threat as being of Chinese provenance. We also find a significant, albeit slight, effect by Trump's ME on self-reported sadness, suggesting that this facial behavior served did not diminish his speech, instead serving as a form of nonverbal punctuation. Further exploration of participant response using the Linguistic Inventory and Word Count software reinforces and extends these findings.
期刊介绍：
POLITICS AND THE LIFE SCIENCES is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal with a global audience. PLS is owned and published by the ASSOCIATION FOR POLITICS AND THE LIFE SCIENCES, the APLS, which is both an American Political Science Association (APSA) Related Group and an American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) Member Society. The PLS topic range is exceptionally broad: evolutionary and laboratory insights into political behavior, including political violence, from group conflict to war, terrorism, and torture; political analysis of life-sciences research, health policy, environmental policy, and biosecurity policy; and philosophical analysis of life-sciences problems, such as bioethical controversies.
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