How Your Body Language Chooses a President

by Carol Kinsey Goman

Politicians are keenly aware that they’re judged not only by their verbal message, but also by their nonverbal communication.  Regardless of your political affiliation, the presidential debates gave us a great platform for observing what body language and speaking styles can do to create impressions. And I posted my observations after each debate.

But, while I was monitoring the debaters’ body language, researchers at The Center for Body Language (in Belgium) were using webcams to monitor the emotions of voters across the United States as they watched the debates. By analyzing the subtle facial movements (micro expressions) of viewers, they were hoping to find out how people really felt about about the candidates.

Their findings:

 

• The study shows why the election is almost a tie, with a very slight advantage for Obama and Romney on different points.

• The large majority of Independent voters turn out to be emotionally indifferent for both of the candidates; however 13% of those voters feel emotionally more connected with Obama and react with a micro expression of disgust on Romney’s sarcastic comments.

• 52% of Independent voters find Romney’s sarcastic Obama-denigrating humor funny.

• Many Democrats show a micro expression of happiness that Obama ended the Iraq war. Republicans too.

• 19% of Democrats laugh at Romney’s speeches as at a joke.

• 26% of Republicans show very strong micro expressions of anger and disgust when seeing Obama. Some of them seem literally to hate Obama. The opposite is not the case: very few Obama supporters seem to “hate” Romney.

• Surprising fact: 16% of Republicans seem to react with negative emotions when seeing Romney’s picture.

• Supporters of both candidates are engaged very seriously when their leaders are talking, while they are more easily distracted when the candidate of the opposition is speaking.

• Many Republicans react clearly with micro expressions of pleasure on Romney’s denigrating humor about Obama.

• By making his remarks about Romney’s plans in most cases more subtle and sophisticated, Obama elicits less negative emotions with both Democrats and Republicans.

Their Conclusion:

It’s an extremely close race between Obama and Romney. If Obama wins, it will be thanks to the stronger emotional connection he has with his supporters, while Romney leads by playing strongly against his opponent.

And when they replicated this study in 15 countries in Europe, Obama had almost double more positive emotional impact on people outside the USA compared to Romney. If Europeans could vote, Obama would win.