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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Unbearable Lightness Of Debating: Performance Ambiguity And Social Influence, Matthew B. Kugler, George R. Goethals
The Unbearable Lightness Of Debating: Performance Ambiguity And Social Influence, Matthew B. Kugler, George R. Goethals
Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications
This chapter considers three sets of studies on how social influence affects perceptions of candidates' performances in presidential debates. The first set shows that perceptions are influenced markedly by the reactions of peers watching the debate at the same time or by televised audiences shown on broadcast debates. The second set shows that expectations created by news accounts prior to debates also have significant impact and that different kinds of news accounts affect different viewers in distinct ways. Individuals with a high need for cognition respond well to more complicated messages that advance some reason as to why an apparently …