The Effects of Partisanship and Candidate Emotionality on Voter Preference

Abstract

In an experiment, Republican and Democratic participants viewed a video clip of an ostensible congressional candidate labeled as Republican, Democratic, or not given a party label delivering the same speech in an emotionally expressive or unexpressive manner. When the candidate was labeled a Democrat, he was rated more positively by Democratic participants; when labeled a Republican, he was preferred by Republicans. When party label was not provided, the emotionally expressive candidate was preferred; however, when either party label was provided, the unemotional candidate was preferred. These findings underscore the importance of partisanship cues and suggest that in the absence of such influential cues as partisanship, less prominent factors such as emotional expressiveness carry greater influence.