Week 3: The Research Continues

This week, I finished reading my first lengthy article called Nonverbal Displays and Political Leadership in France and the U.S. by Roger D. Masters and Dennis G. Sullivan. In this article, experts analyzed French and American viewers’ emotional and cognitive responses to images/displays of their political leaders. To perform the experiment, close-up images of different French candidates demonstrating happiness/reassurance, anger/threatening, and fear/evasion were selected from a videotape during the 1986 election. The experiment involved 3 rooms: the first only had the sound from the excerpt, the second only displayed the image, and the third was for both sound and image. Before the testing, the viewers completed a questionnaire regarding their own political attitudes, and after going through a room, they would assess the candidate's behavior and self-report emotions.

The article concluded by explaining that the French viewers’ descriptions of their leaders were more influenced by their prior attitudes of the leader than were the Americans. It also emphasized the need to understand facial displays as communicative signals to help us better grasp nuances in political process (public opinion polls plummeting after a speech/debate etc.). Finally, the authors described how nonverbal cues can be used to characterize differences in political culture as the French responded more positively to anger/threatening while the Americans generally view such emotions as unfavorable.

After analyzing this article with the help of my advisor, I realized that I needed not to focus on every little detail of the article, but on the conclusion and bigger picture. Later, I learned how to use citations on Google scholar to find articles that reference the one I read. In the next couple days, I plan on reading these articles and analyzing them to help me expand my knowledge regarding body language in politics.