The role of gendered verbal and nonverbal cues in political campaigns

Cinar, Asli Ceren (2024) The role of gendered verbal and nonverbal cues in political campaigns. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

Political scientists have long been invested in studying the role of gender in electoral politics. However, a large majority of work has focused on gendered verbal cues, with gendered nonverbal cues often taking a backseat, partially due to the difficulty of studying those signals. This thesis aims to address some of this imbalance and applies recent methodological advances in analysing visual and voice data to show that gendered nonverbal cues matter for elite and voter perceptions. Through one observational study, one visual survey experiment and two field experiments, I revisit candidate-voter interactions through a gendered lens. First, I relax the assumption that nonverbal cues are secondary to verbal messages by investigating how U.S. candidates adjust their voice pitch—a physiologically gendered nonverbal signal—during town hall meetings. Using computational methods, I find that women and men candidates use different nonverbal communication styles, aligning with evolutionary psychology’s findings on gender-based behaviour appeal. Second, through a novel visual conjoint experiment with AI-generated candidates, I show that gendered visual cues—facial femininity and masculinity—influence voter perceptions, which aligns with evolving gender stereotypes in politics. Lastly, I move beyond nonverbal cues to analyse the ways in which candidates effectively convey important social identities in campaigns through strategic identity priming. Based on two field experiments conducted in Germany with women candidates, I find that priming gender and place-based identities increases candidate name recognition but not vote choice. This thesis advances our understanding of how gendered cues, both verbal and nonverbal, influence political behaviour using innovative methods that contribute to future research on voter decision-making and gender dynamics in politics.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2024 Asli Ceren Cinar
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Sets:	Departments > Government
Supervisor:	Foos, Florian and Hobolt, Sara and Bruter, Michael
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4788

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