How Intense Language Hurts a Politician's Trustworthiness: Voter Norms of a Political Debate via Language Expectancy Theory

Abstract

Incivility in U.S. political debates hurts democracy. But uncivil language is more entertaining, exciting, and arousing than civil language. Given the contradictory relationship between people's general aversion and the media attention to popularized incivility, insight can be gained through examining politicians’ language intensity, a relatively common yet scarcely explored phenomenon in political debates. In a preregistered multiple-message experimental design with an original stimulus filmed for this study, participants ( n = 538 registered U.S. voters) watch a debate featuring a real politician (with a real journalist moderating the debate). Participants are randomly assigned to high- or low-intensity language conditions. Inspired by language expectancy theory (LET), a multiple-mediation model is tested, whereby language intensity decreases a politician's trustworthiness through intense language being more uncivil than low-intensity language which is associated with voters’ normative expectancies. Discussion concerns the practical implications for politicians’ debate strategy and theoretical ramifications of LET via communication accommodation theory.