It's amazing I won. I was running against peace, prosperity, and incumbency. George W. Bush, June 14, 2001, speaking to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Perrson, unaware that a live television camera was still rolling.
The Case Study
Making someone, or indeed something, persuasive is much more complex than it may initially seem. We know what appeals to us to make us align with someone, but we are not always aware what the 'x factor' they possess really is; in other words, we can warm to someone without fully understanding why. The following example, from psychological literature, sheds some light on the matter. During the American 1984 Presidential campaign between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale an experiment took place for eight days. Lead researcher Brian Mullen, of Syracuse University, videotaped three national, nightly news broadcasts featuring news anchors Peter Jennings of ABC, Tom Brokaw of NBC and Dan Rather of CBS. Mullen viewed the tapes and excerpted every reference to both candidates, leaving him with thirty-seven segments of roughly two and a half seconds in length. A group of randomly selected participants then viewed the tapes with the volume muted so they were unaware of what the broadcast pertained, removing the chance of political bias. The participants were asked to rate the facial expressions of each news anchor on a 21-point scale, with the lowest number being "extremely negative" and the highest being "extremely positive".
The outcome proved enlightening. Dan Rather of CBS scored 10.46 and 10.37 when talking about Mondale and Reagan respectively, meaning his expression was perfectly neutral, offering no advocacy over one candidate or the other. Tom Brokaw of NBC scored 11.21 for Mondale and 11.50 for Reagan, making him slightly more positive for both than Rather but still remaining balanced for both. The enlightening part came when analysing the results of ABC's Peter Jennings. His results showed him speaking more positively about Mondale than both his counterparts, at 13.38, but for Reagan he became so enthusiastic he scored a very high 17.44 - less than four points off the maximum. The study's researcher Mullen acted in accordance with his scientific duty and tried to determine if there was an explanation for this beyond candidate bias, such as the possibility that he was just more animated and expressive than the other broadcasters. To conclude whether or not this was the case, the same participants were shown control segments from the same broadcasters as they spoke about a happy topic and a sad topic (namely, a medical breakthrough in treating a congenital disease and Indira Gandhi's funeral respectively). Of Jennings, Brokaw and Rather, Jennings not only failed to score higher, but appeared to be the least expressive and by no means had a happy expression as his usual one. So much so that he scored only 14.13 for the story of the medical breakthrough, which was considerably lower than both other newscasters. Therefore, Mullen had no choice but to conclude that Jennings did, in fact, have "significant and noticeable bias in facial expression" when talking about Ronald Reagan.
Samaa TV News Anchor Exposed by just50
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3152216
The Case Study
Making someone, or indeed something, persuasive is much more complex than it may initially seem. We know what appeals to us to make us align with someone, but we are not always aware what the 'x factor' they possess really is; in other words, we can warm to someone without fully understanding why. The following example, from psychological literature, sheds some light on the matter. During the American 1984 Presidential campaign between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale an experiment took place for eight days. Lead researcher Brian Mullen, of Syracuse University, videotaped three national, nightly news broadcasts featuring news anchors Peter Jennings of ABC, Tom Brokaw of NBC and Dan Rather of CBS. Mullen viewed the tapes and excerpted every reference to both candidates, leaving him with thirty-seven segments of roughly two and a half seconds in length. A group of randomly selected participants then viewed the tapes with the volume muted so they were unaware of what the broadcast pertained, removing the chance of political bias. The participants were asked to rate the facial expressions of each news anchor on a 21-point scale, with the lowest number being "extremely negative" and the highest being "extremely positive".
The outcome proved enlightening. Dan Rather of CBS scored 10.46 and 10.37 when talking about Mondale and Reagan respectively, meaning his expression was perfectly neutral, offering no advocacy over one candidate or the other. Tom Brokaw of NBC scored 11.21 for Mondale and 11.50 for Reagan, making him slightly more positive for both than Rather but still remaining balanced for both. The enlightening part came when analysing the results of ABC's Peter Jennings. His results showed him speaking more positively about Mondale than both his counterparts, at 13.38, but for Reagan he became so enthusiastic he scored a very high 17.44 - less than four points off the maximum. The study's researcher Mullen acted in accordance with his scientific duty and tried to determine if there was an explanation for this beyond candidate bias, such as the possibility that he was just more animated and expressive than the other broadcasters. To conclude whether or not this was the case, the same participants were shown control segments from the same broadcasters as they spoke about a happy topic and a sad topic (namely, a medical breakthrough in treating a congenital disease and Indira Gandhi's funeral respectively). Of Jennings, Brokaw and Rather, Jennings not only failed to score higher, but appeared to be the least expressive and by no means had a happy expression as his usual one. So much so that he scored only 14.13 for the story of the medical breakthrough, which was considerably lower than both other newscasters. Therefore, Mullen had no choice but to conclude that Jennings did, in fact, have "significant and noticeable bias in facial expression" when talking about Ronald Reagan.
Samaa TV News Anchor Exposed by just50
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3152216
