The Role of Background Behavior in Televised Debates: Does Displaying Nonverbal Agreement and/or Disagreement Benefit Either Debater?

ABSTRACT

This study examined the effects of background nonverbal behavior displayed with the purpose of undermining one's opponent in televised debates. Students watched one of four versions of a televised debate. In each, while the speaking debater appeared on the main screen, subscreens displayed her nonspeaking opponent's background nonverbal behavior. In one version, the non-speaking debater remained “stone faced” during her opponent's speech, while in the other three she nonverbally displayed occasional disagreement, nearly constant disagreement, or both agreement and disagreement. After viewing the debates, students rated the debaters' credibility, appropriateness, objectivity, and debate skills, in addition to judging who won the debate. Analysis indicated that background nonverbal behavior influenced audience perceptions of debaters' credibility, appropriateness, objectivity, debate skill, and the extent to which the debate was won. These results suggest that adding nonverbal agreement to expressions of nonverbal disagreement do not reduce the negative impacts of communicating disagreement nonverbally during an opponent's speech and may in fact further decrease the audiences' perception of a debater's credibility and overall performance.

Keywords:

• debate
• impression management
• nonverbal communication
• persuasion
• television

Notes

1. For a script of the debate, contact the first author.

2. In all versions of the debate, the negative speaker's subscreens appeared four times during her opponent's speech (at 11 s, 1 min 55 s, 3 min 40 s, and 5 min 26 s) and averaged 1 min 21 s in duration.

3. Longer-lasting subscreens in the fourth (constant disagreement) condition permitted us to include more nonverbal disagreement relative to the other conditions. Doing this, however, created a limitation to the study that will be addressed in the discussion section.

4. As a way to assess a baseline comparison between debaters on all dependent variables, we computed eight paired t-tests using only the stone-faced (i.e., no nonverbal disagreement) condition. Results suggest that Speaker 1 (i.e., the norm violating debater) was perceived to be significantly more sociable, appropriate, and to have higher perceived character. Speaker 2, on the other hand, was perceived to be significantly more competent, composed, and to be a better arguer. There were no differences between the debaters on baseline levels of perceived extroversion or objectivity. For details, contact the first author.