The Role of Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior in Televised Political Debates

This paper presents a study of televised political debates based on an integrated model that simultaneously examines verbal and nonverbal communication and their interconnections. An integrative approach yields better explanatory power than a separate analysis of each of these modalities. This model was used to analyze televised debates from Israeli election campaigns and identify consistent discrepancy and nondiscrepancy patterns of behavior of winners and losers. The model also sheds light on gender differences and similarities in a novel perspective of discrepant and nondiscrepant communication styles. A set of propositions on the kinds of behaviors that might be beneficial or detrimental for contenders in a televised debate is provided.