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Article published In:
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
Vol. 6:1 (2018) ► pp.127–148

Effects of gender and verbal aggression on perceptions of U.S. political speakers

| Bazaarvoice, Germany
| University of Memphis, USA

Two experiments tested whether male and female political speakers in the United States are judged differently when they use verbal attacks. Participants read eight short excerpts of political speeches, half of which contained character and competence attacks (the other half without such attacks), and half of which were attributed to a female speaker (the other half a male speaker), and rated these in terms of agreement with the message, and perceptions of credibility, appropriateness, and aggressiveness. In both experiments, messages containing verbally aggressive attacks resulted in less perceived credibility and appropriateness, and these negative effects were consistent regardless of the speaker’s gender. In Experiment 1, women tended to penalize aggressive speakers more so than did men, suggesting the men are less sensitive to verbal aggression in their evaluations of political speakers. However, women tended to perceive non-aggressive female speakers as more aggressive than male speakers. Most of these interaction effects were not replicated in Experiment 2.

Keywords: gender, language, politics, verbal aggression, experiment
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Negative campaigning and aggressive communication
    • 1.2Gender and use of negative campaign tactics
    • 1.3The present studies
  • 2.Experiment 1
    • 2.1Rationale and hypotheses
    • 2.2Method
    • 2.3Materials
    • 2.4Participants and procedure
    • 2.5Dependent measures
    • 2.6Results and discussion
  • 3.Experiment 2
    • 3.1Rationale and hypotheses
    • 3.2Method
      • 3.2.1Design, materials and manipulation check
      • 3.2.2Participants and procedure
      • 3.2.3Results and discussion
  • 4.Effects of participant gender
  • 5.General discussion
  • References
Published online: 2 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00006.nau
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