Introduction
Perhaps
the most influential information about a politician is his “image,” consisting
of speech style, physical appearance, and general mode of self-presentation.
A particularly powerful channel through which an image is perceived is
the politician’s use of gestures, facial expressions, voice movement, and
general appearance, or his nonverbal behavior (Ambady, Bernieri, &
Richeson, 2000). A particularly important type of image to politicians
to convey to their constituents and other lawmakers is that of a credible,
competent speaker (Wu & Shaffer, 1987). While researchers have
paid much attention to the effect of a politicians’ visual nonverbal behavior
on judgments of his credibility, little work has been done that investigates
the role of vocal qualities in credibility impression formation (Duez,
1997). The purpose of this study is to examine the role of the qualities
of a politician’s voice in influencing subsequent judgments about his credibility
as a speaker.
One particular
quality of nonverbal behavior is that it is difficult to control and less
accessible to the actor than to the observer (DePaulo, 1992). Because
of the complexity involved with controlling nonverbal behavior from multiple
channels at the same time, and because the actor is seldom completely aware
of his nonverbal expressions, nonverbal behavior results in a relatively
valid source of information regarding the dispositions and internal states
of others. Research by Ekman and Friesen (1969) suggests that the
nonverbal channel under the least conscious control is the voice; more
cognitive attention seems to be paid to the visual nonverbal channels such
as body posture and facial expressions.
A savvy politician
concerned with his image and the way his is perceived by others should
be more conscious of his paralanguage and voice qualities than the average
person. Moreover, he should also be aware of how these nonverbal
signals influence the formation of impressions about him. While politicians
cannot be an expert in every issue, it may be possible that they are more
conscious of, and are therefore more able to control their nonverbal behavior
enough to appear that way to perceivers. In other words, politicians
are especially aware of which paralanguage should be used in order to form
a credible impression. If this is the case, then, politicians should receive
higher ratings on scales related to credibility than non-politicians, or
those who are not as skilled at impression management, even though they
are equally competent in the subject of the speech.
While conscious
awareness and control of nonverbal behavior requires much cognitive effort,
the process of impression formation is more automatic and considerably
less cognitively demanding (Anderson, Krull, & Weiner, 1996).
An abundance of research in social perception has shown that interpersonal
judgment is a top-down process; it is driven by and influenced by schemas
and expectations (DePaulo, 1992). Social categorization for gender,
age, and race, for example, occurs automatically within a few milliseconds
of encountering a target (Banaji & Hardin, 1996). Similarly,
Zajonc (1980) has argued that a target’s emotions are perceived immediately
and effectively with minimal conscious processing. In addition to
categorizing targets with respect to basic information such as gender and
race, schemas and stereotypes may help a perceiver form more complex, detailed
impressions of a target as well. For example, Ambady, Hallahan, and
Conner (1999) demonstrated that sexual orientation of a target can be judged
accurately after only a few seconds of observation. Because so little
time was allowed for the participant to observe the target, the subsequent
judgments could be made only utilizing automatic, unconscious processing,
and not effortful cognitive reasoning.
The apparent
automaticity of impression formation begs the question of how much time
is needed by a perceiver to make judgments of a target accurately.
A meta-analysis of 44 studies all involving observation of a target less
than five minutes in length yielded the results that the “thinness of the
slice” of observation time did not seem to matter when it came to the accuracy
of interpersonal perception. In other words, once observation time
was limited to five minutes or under, resulting judgments of a target remained
constant despite continually decreasing observation time (Ambady, 1992).
In addition to categorizing targets with respect to basic information such
as gender and race, schemas and stereotypes may help a perceiver form more
complex, detailed impressions of a target as well. For example, Ambady,
Hallahan, and Conner (1999) demonstrated that sexual orientation of a target
can be judged accurately after only a few seconds of observation.
Because so little time was allowed for the participant to observe the target,
the subsequent judgments could be made only utilizing automatic, unconscious
processing, and not effortful cognitive reasoning.
Although
automatic impression formation can be a useful cognitive shortcut in every-day
interpersonal perception, it would seem that politicians, who hold an important
role in society would be the target of more elaborate processing.
This, however, does not seem to be the case. There are several reasons
why a voter would focus more on a politician’s image and personality than
on campaign platform or voting record. One of the most important
is the level of effort and the amount of time required to learn about political
issues (Krostick, 1988). Rather than expend the energy collecting
information that would help them make more complete, informed impressions
of politicians, voters preserve their cognition and instead rely on the
stereotypes and schemas activated by the easily observable, salient characteristics
of the target politician, namely his appearance and nonverbal behavior.
Another reason
why personality and image of a target politician play such a great role
in the perception process is the attitude held by many that “character
is fate”, or that character predicts a candidate’s performance in office
(Masters & Sullivan, 1993). Kinder (1986) identified four major
traits that voters use to evaluate the personality of a politician:
leadership, competence, integrity, and empathy. Arguably, competence
is the trait most central for predicting a candidate’s success in office.
In addition, it also lends a great deal of persuasive power to the politician.
Factor analysis
by O’Keefe (1990) has revealed that competence is indeed one major dimension
of judgments of a target politician’s credibility, and is represented on
such scales as trained – untrained, and qualified – unqualified. Another
dimension closely related to credibility is trustworthiness, represented
by the scale honesty – dishonesty, among others. These scales, along
with a scale for perceived attractiveness of the voice were used in the
present study to rate the credibility of the paralanguage of the voices
of politicians and non-politicians.
An
interesting finding in political behavior is that education level and political
sophistication do not seem to be related to the way credibility impressions
of a target politician are formed. In fact, one study even found
that people with higher levels of political sophistication were more likely
to focus on the politician’s image and personality than on political issues
or partisan group connections (Miller, Wattenberg, & Malanchuk, 1986).
These findings highlight the important role of the politician’s image on
the way he is perceived.
Research
Question & Hypothesis
To
gain persuasive power and effectiveness, then, a politician must create
an image of himself as credible and competent. However, voters appear
unwilling to sacrifice the cognitive effort involved in researching and
learning about a politician’s background to gain a sense of his areas of
competency. Is it possible for a politician to communicate his competency
and credibility through nonverbal channels alone? The present study
attempts to answer this question. Specifically, it puts forth the
hypothesis that politicians can, indeed, manipulate their vocal nonverbal
behavior in such a way that leads them to be perceived as credible and
competent. Moreover, due to their increased awareness of nonverbal
behavior and its effects on impression formation, politicians will exhibit
nonverbal behavior that allows them to be perceived as more credible than
men who are not as concerned with the impressions others form of them.
Method
Participants
Sixty students (thirty females and
thirty males) from a small, Catholic, liberal arts college in the northeast
participated in the study for course credit. The mean age of the
participants was 19.13 years. The majority of the participants (61%)
were not registered voters. Of the participants that were registered,
17.39% were registered as democrats, 34.78% were registered as republicans,
and 47.82% were registered as independents.
Stimuli
The stimuli consisted of audio clips
of the recorded voices of both politicians and mature-sounding men who
had never held elected offices. In each recording the speaker talked
bout the events surrounding the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
in New York City on September 11, 2001.
The
voice recordings of eleven politicians were obtained from television broadcasts
from several major news networks. In order to be considered for inclusion
in the study, each politician voice clip had to meet a number of different
requirements. First, it was imperative that no background noise was
present in the audio clip. Second, only speakers who were unlikely
to have unrecognizable voices and therefore unlikely to be identified by
the participants were used. Third, an effort was made to use only
audio clips from discussion-based interviews, rather than public addresses.
This requirement of the voice clips helped to minimize any differences
that may exist between the paralanguage of public speaking and the paralanguage
used in more intimate conversations, which was the format used to record
the non-politicians. In addition, four politicians were recorded
during a face-to face interview, in the same manner as the non-politicians,
so participants would not be able to determine whether a voice belonged
to a politician or a non-politician based merely on the sound of the recording.
Ten
non-politicians were recorded while speaking how they learned out about
the terrorist attacks. In addition to these interview-based recordings,
five television recordings of non-politician males who were somehow connected
with the terrorist attacks were used. For example, one clip was taken
from an interview with a firefighter who was speaking about his experience
working at the site of the attacks.
Materials
The face-to-face interviews were recorded
using the Panasonic Digital Audio Recorder model number RR-QR240.
The television samples were recorded with a standard Samsung television
and VCR unit. The voice clips were then downloaded into Adobe Premiere
5.0 and shortened to three to five seconds in length, and then arranged
in random order. Once the audio clips were shortened and arranged,
they were exported to a Philips-Magnavox stereo equipped with a tape deck
and recorded onto a Maxwell UR IEC Type 1 Normal cassette tape.
Half
of the tapes were content-filtered by using the audio analyzer built by
the electronics shop at Harvard University and described in Scherer, Koivumaki,
and Rosenthal (1972). This piece of equipment attenuates all sound
frequencies higher than 650 Hertz, resulting in voices that sound muffled
and slightly distorted, although the intonation, rhythm, tempo, and loudness
of the voice is preserved.
Dependent measures
Because previous research has shown
that a target’s credibility is related to his perceived amount of information,
qualifications, and training (O’Keefe, 1990), Likert scales for these qualities
were included as dependent measures. A scale for honesty was added
to determine if low credibility ratings were related to participants’ perceived
deception in the voices they heard. Participants were also asked
to rate the voices on an agitation scale to assess how emotionality expressed
in the voice affected credibility judgments. Finally, because individuals
with voices that are thought to sound attractive are perceived to possess
desirable personality traits (Berscheid & Webster, 1974), a scale for
attractiveness was included. High correlations between the attractiveness
dimension and the other dimensions would indicate that perceived credibility
was largely due to the more positive qualities attributed to an attractive
voice.
A score
of 1 on a Likert scale indicated that the particular quality was not characteristic
at all of the voice, while a score of 7 indicated that the quality was
very characteristic of the voice.
Procedure
Participants entering the laboratory
were told that the study was designed to test for the presence of specific
vocal intonations associated with credibility and expertise. The
participants were given detailed instructions about listening to the tape
and rating the voices using the Likert scales. After giving their
informed consent, the participants completed a short questionnaire about
their eligibility to vote, their political identification, and their level
of interest in politics. Following the completion of these questions,
the participants were instructed to put on their earphones and begin listening
to the tape.
Participants
were randomly assigned to either the content-filtered or the unfiltered
conditions. Each participant, regardless of condition, heard 30 voice
clips and was given 30 seconds to rate each voice on the Likert scales.
Participants were asked not to listen to the voice clips more than once.
It took approximately 20 minutes for participants to listen to and rate
each clip.
After all
of the clips had been rated, each participant was fully debriefed and was
thanked for his or her help with the study.
Results
The dependent variables in
this study were the voices’ ratings on the six Likert scales for the attractive,
qualified, trained, honest, informed, and agitated dimensions. A
paired-samples t-test was conducted to evaluate whether politicians were
rated higher than non-politicians on six dimensions related to credibility.
Significant differences were found between the groups in all of the dimensions
except for one. Specifically, politicians were rated higher than
non-politicians on the qualified dimension, t(59)=7.91 p=.000; the trained
dimension, t(59)= 6.39 p=.000; the attractiveness dimension t(59)= 3.06
p=.001; and the informed dimension t(59)= 6.38 p=.000. Politicians
were rated significantly lower than non-politicians on the agitated dimension,
t(59)= -1.98 p= .026). No significant differences were found between
politician ratings and non-politician ratings on the honesty dimension.
Please refer to table 1 for the means.
Because perceived attractiveness may
lead to a ceiling affect with ratings, Pearson r correlations were computed
between the attractiveness dimension and the other five dimensions.
The results of these tests indicated that this was indeed the case; attractiveness
was positively correlated with ratings on the informed (r = .55, p > .01),
trained (r = .48, p < .01), honest (r = .606, p > .01), and qualified
(r = .49, p < .01) dimension for the politicians. The results
for the correlations between the attractiveness scores for the non-politicians
were similar. Please refer to table 2.
The results of the multivariate analysis
of variance for the of the effect of the subject variable of voting status
(registered or non-registered) on ratings revealed significant a significant
difference between registered voters and participants not registered to
vote on ratings for politicians on the informed dimension, F(21,58)=3.90
p=.044.
Finally, significant differences
were found between the two conditions of the presentation of the stimuli.
Contrary to the hypothesis of the present study and also to what other
studies have found (Rosenthal, 1979), the filtered voices and the unfiltered
voices were perceived differently. Specifically, the unfiltered clips
of politicians were rated higher than the filtered clips of politicians
on the informed dimension, F(29,58)=5.61 p=.021; and on the qualified dimension
as well F(29,58)=4.25 p=.04. In addition, differences by condition
on the dimension of honesty for non-politicians approached significance,
F(29,58)= 3.64 p = .061. These unexpected findings suggest that content-filtering
leads to lower over-all ratings and may not be reliable enough for use
in paralanguage and prosody research. See table 4.
Implications
Over
all, this hypothesis was supported; politicians’ voices were rated significantly
higher on the attractive, trained, informed, and qualified dimensions,
and significantly lower on the agitated dimension. However, significant
correlations were found between the scores for the attractiveness dimension
and the scores of the trained, informed, and qualified dimensions, indicating
that higher overall ratings for the politicians may be due to an attractiveness
halo effect. The judgmental biases that favor attractive targets
is well documented in the social perception literature (Sharani, Dipboye,
& Gehrlein, 1978).
Further evidence
that perceived credibility was due to an attractiveness effect comes two
from significant differences between the filtered and unfiltered voice
clips, on the informed and qualified dimensions. In theory, no difference
should have been found between the ratings of the participants in the conditions
for which the two types of stimuli were presented; paralanguage should
have been equally discernable in both the unfiltered clips and the filtered
clips. Not surprisingly, the unfiltered voices were perceived as
much more attractive than the filtered voices. The subsequent credibility
ratings were significantly lower for the filtered voices as well, clearly
demonstrating that they did not benefit from the attractiveness halo effect
as did the unfiltered voices.
It may also
be possible that politicians with particularly attractive voices
have been more successful in politics due to the positive personality traits
attributed to them. These politicians’ voices may have been perceived as
more attractive than the average male voice even before all the training
and experience, thus contributing to their successful elections.
Anecdotal evidence would suggest, though, that not all successful politicians
have typically attractive voices. Research is needed to determine if certain
characteristics of a voice are perceived as attractive to certain people,
but not for others.
The target’s
similarity to the perceiver is generally associated with increased attractiveness
to the target (Koernig, 2001). An interesting study might be to observe
how members of different social groups respond to a politician exhibiting
vocal characteristics of their in-group. For example, would voters
living in the south perceive the voice of a presidential candidate with
a southern drawl as more attractive than voters living in the north?
The relationship between such voter variables as race, sex, economic status,
geographic location, and level of education on perceived attractiveness
would be intriguing to explore.
The different
audiences for the politicians’ speeches and non-politicians’ speeches may
also have exerted an effect on perceived attractiveness. Politicians
appearing on television would naturally be more cognizant of their self-presentations
than the non-politicians, who engaged in a short conversation to an audience
of only one. Increased awareness of one’s nonverbal behavior most
likely leads to the increased ability to control it; thus the recordings
taken from television and from face-to-face interviews probably differed
in the speaker’s level of awareness and control of his paralanguage, influencing
the credibility impressions perceivers made about him.
Regardless
of why their voices are attractive, it is apparent that politicians should
exert every effort to appear as attractive as possible to their constituents.
The results of this study indicate that an attractive voice carries with
it positive impressions of credibility and trustworthiness, qualities necessary
for a successful political career. Thus, another implication of this
study is that politicians should be made aware of the importance of the
perceived attractiveness of their voice, and perhaps be trained in such
a way to make their voice more attractive to voters and other politicians.
In sum, the results of this study
indicate that politicians’ voices were rated as sounding more credible
than the voices of their non-elected counterparts, but this effect was
possibly due to politicians’ higher ratings for attractiveness rather than
a specific, detectable paralanguage pattern associated with credibility.
Even though the results of the study regarding a particular paralanguage
pattern associated with credibility are inconclusive, the importance of
attractiveness in the impression formation of politicians was highlighted.
Clearly, if a politician must choose only one of his qualities to improve
and emphasize to his constituents, it should be his level of attractiveness.
References
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J., & Richeson, J. A. (2000).
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Please contact me with any questions at
melissasurawski@altavista.com
Links
Social
Psychology Network
Nalini
Ambady's Thin Slice lab
Psi
Chi at Saint Anselm College
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