The less a candidate blinks during debates, the likelier he’ll win -
When President Obama and Mitt Romney take the stage on Wednesday in Denver for the first of three presidential debates, keep an eye on how often both men blink — the results could bring the White House race into better focus.
According to the analysis of Joseph Tecce, a Boston College psychophysiologist who has spent decades studying the body language of presidential hopefuls, the candidate who blinks more during debates has lost every election but one since 1980. The lone exception was in 2000, when a faster-blinking George W. Bush bested Al Gore in the electoral college ... but lost the popular vote.
During the 2008 general election, Tecce’s theory has borne out nicely: Obama, who blinked 62 times per minute, trounced McCain who clocked in at 104 times per minute.
“If you drive a car 100 miles an hour, you will lose your driving license, and if you blink 100 times a minute, you will lose an election,” Tecce opined in a recent presentation.
Tecce bases his theory on the well-established relationship between our eye movements and our emotional state. Typically, stress and other unpleasant feelings cause people to blink more often. As social creatures, we also recognize faster blinking as a sign of distress in others.
Explaining the apparent link with election results is a bit trickier though. Does the audience find the faster-blinking candidate unnerving and form a negative impression? Or does the candidate who is trailing in the polls tend to be under greater stress — and therefore likely to blink more often? Tecce says that both factors likely come into play.
This year, Romney seems to be an early favorite to blink less, based on Tecce’s analysis of the candidates’ most-recent convention speeches. Romney blinked 33 times a minute during his acceptance address, while Obama did 41 times a minute.
Still, Tecce said, he expects the blinking contest will be tight.
“It appears from previous performances that they are both relatively close in blink rate and both in the normal range,” Tecce told The Daily. “Consequently, we will have to watch carefully in the coming debates to see if this pattern holds or whether there will be an observable difference between these two candidates. If their rates hold now, as it has in the past, there may not be enough of a difference for voters to be affected.”
Read more -
http://www.thedaily.com/article/2012/09/29/100112-news-debate-blinking/
When President Obama and Mitt Romney take the stage on Wednesday in Denver for the first of three presidential debates, keep an eye on how often both men blink — the results could bring the White House race into better focus.
According to the analysis of Joseph Tecce, a Boston College psychophysiologist who has spent decades studying the body language of presidential hopefuls, the candidate who blinks more during debates has lost every election but one since 1980. The lone exception was in 2000, when a faster-blinking George W. Bush bested Al Gore in the electoral college ... but lost the popular vote.
During the 2008 general election, Tecce’s theory has borne out nicely: Obama, who blinked 62 times per minute, trounced McCain who clocked in at 104 times per minute.
“If you drive a car 100 miles an hour, you will lose your driving license, and if you blink 100 times a minute, you will lose an election,” Tecce opined in a recent presentation.
Tecce bases his theory on the well-established relationship between our eye movements and our emotional state. Typically, stress and other unpleasant feelings cause people to blink more often. As social creatures, we also recognize faster blinking as a sign of distress in others.
Explaining the apparent link with election results is a bit trickier though. Does the audience find the faster-blinking candidate unnerving and form a negative impression? Or does the candidate who is trailing in the polls tend to be under greater stress — and therefore likely to blink more often? Tecce says that both factors likely come into play.
This year, Romney seems to be an early favorite to blink less, based on Tecce’s analysis of the candidates’ most-recent convention speeches. Romney blinked 33 times a minute during his acceptance address, while Obama did 41 times a minute.
Still, Tecce said, he expects the blinking contest will be tight.
“It appears from previous performances that they are both relatively close in blink rate and both in the normal range,” Tecce told The Daily. “Consequently, we will have to watch carefully in the coming debates to see if this pattern holds or whether there will be an observable difference between these two candidates. If their rates hold now, as it has in the past, there may not be enough of a difference for voters to be affected.”
Read more -
http://www.thedaily.com/article/2012/09/29/100112-news-debate-blinking/
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