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Speaking through the body

Do people associate the body movements of politicians with their speech?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2017

Markus Koppensteiner  and
Greg Siegle
Markus Koppensteiner*
Affiliation:
University of Vienna
Greg Siegle
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study
*
Correspondence: Markus Koppensteiner, NIAS/KNAW, Korte Spinhuissteeg 3, 1012 CG Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email: markus-koppensteiner@gmx.net
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Abstract

When people speak, they gesture. However, is the audience watching a speaker who is sensitive to this link? We translated the body movements of politicians into stick-figure animations and separated the visual from the audio channel. We then asked participants to match a selection of five audio tracks (including the correct one) with the stick-figure animations. The participants made correct decisions in 65% of all cases (chance level of 20%). Matching voices with animations was less difficult when politicians showed expansive movements and spoke with a loud voice. Thus, people are sensitive to the link between motion cues and vocal cues, and this link appears to become even more apparent when a speaker shows expressive behaviors. Future work will have to refine and validate the methods applied and investigate how mismatches between communication channels affect the impressions that people form of politicians.

Keywords

Nonverbal communicationmultimodal signalsbodily expressivenessvocal expressivenessgestureimpression formationstick figure animationpolitics
Type
Articles
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , Fall 2017 , pp. 104 - 113
Copyright
© Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 2017 

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