Political Speech: The Influence of Speaker Sex and Verbal Aggression on Message Perception

Abstract

This study examined the influence of speaker sex and verbal aggression on the persuasiveness of political speech. College students (n = 106) read eight examples of political speech where the sex of the speaker and the level of aggression were manipulated. Participants then completed measures assessing message agreement, speaker credibility, and communicative appropriateness. Results indicated that male and female politicians were evaluated similarly on measures of persuasiveness. In addition, aggressive messages were evaluated as being less persuasive than nonaggressive messages. Finally, results identified a significant interaction between speaker sex and level of aggression when predicting message persuasiveness.

Keywords:

• political communication
• speaker sex
• verbal aggression

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).