0000000000858229
AUTHOR
Michael Sülflow
The Power of Smiling. How Politicians’ Displays of Happiness Affect Viewers’ Gaze Behavior and Political Judgments
It is a common assumption that facial expressions of politicians, such as a smile, are powerful tools to draw attention and evoke positive impressions. However, previous research has not fully linked politicians’ nonverbal behavior, viewers’ visual attention and their political impression formation. To address this gap, the research presented in this chapter uses a multi-method design to explore the role of a politician’s smiling for viewers’ judgments about him. More precisely, a laboratory study examined the visual attention (eye-tracking; n = 122) and spontaneous judgments of viewers (continuous response measurement; n = 125) while the participants were exposed to an excerpt of a German …
Selective attention in the news feed: An eye-tracking study on the perception and selection of political news posts on Facebook
Social networking sites such as Facebook are becoming increasingly important as a source for news. However, few studies have investigated what drives attention to content within the news feed and what influences the selection of news posts. We hypothesized that attitude consistency, the credibility of a source, and comments of other users raise interest in a news post in the news feed and influence the selection decision. A 2 × 2 × 2 laboratory experiment ( N = 103) using eye-tracking measurement showed that attitude consistency did not influence attention distribution in the news feed, but users preferred to select news posts with content reinforcing their attitudes. Participants spent mor…
Hate Speech as an Indicator for the State of the Society
Abstract. Previous research indicates that user comments serve as exemplars and thus have an effect on perceived public opinion. Moreover, they also shape the attitudes of their readers. However, studies almost exclusively focus on controversial issues if they explore the consequences of user comments for attitudes and perceived public opinion. The current study wants to find out if hate speech attacking social groups due to characteristics such as religion or sexual orientation also has an effect on the way people think about these groups and how they think society perceives them. Moreover, we also investigated the effects of hate speech on prejudiced attitudes. To explore the hypotheses a…