Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T09:32:40.221Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Does music affect citizens’ evaluations of candidates?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2021

Emmanuel Heisbourg Open the ORCID record for Emmanuel Heisbourg [Opens in a new window]  and
Fernando Feitosa
Emmanuel Heisbourg*
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal
Fernando Feitosa
Affiliation:
McGill University
*
Correspondence: Emmanuel Heisbourg, Department of Political Science, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada. Email: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

While some candidates use music in some of their campaign ads to shape individuals’ perceptions of their competence or compassion, for example, it is unclear whether the relationship between music and trait perceptions is empirically valid. Considering the importance of knowing where trait perceptions—which represent important determinants of the vote—come from and the extent to which it is possible to manipulate trait perceptions by means of music, this study investigates the effect of music on trait perceptions using data from an online survey experiment conducted between October 30 and November 12, 2020. In this experiment, 362 individuals were exposed to a random sequence of five campaign ads, either with their original music or with no music. Following each campaign ad, individuals were asked to evaluate the candidate’s competency, honesty, leadership, and compassion. The analyses reveal that music marginally affects perceptions of competency, honesty, and leadership. Moreover, music exerts no significant effect on perceptions of compassion.

Keywords

Political ScienceMusicExperimentCommunication
Type
Special Issue: Psychophysiology, Cognition, and Political Differences
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , Fall 2021 , pp. 172 - 178
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bachorik, J. P., Bangert, M., Loui, P., Larke, K., Berger, J., Rowe, R., & Schlaug, G. (2009). Emotion in motion: Investigating the time-course of emotional judgments of musical stimuli. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 26(4), 355–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumgartner, T., Esslen, M., & Jäncke, L. (2006). From emotion perception to emotion experience: Emotions evoked by pictures and classical music. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 60(1), 34–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bischoff, C. S. (2013). Electorally unstable by supply or demand? An examination of the causes of electoral volatility in advanced industrial democracies. Public Choice, 156(3–4), 537–561.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bittner, A. (2015). Leader evaluations and partisan stereotypes: A comparative analysis. In Lobo, M. C. & Curtice, J. (Eds.), Personality politics? The role of leader evaluations in democratic elections (pp. 17–37). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brader, T. (2005). Striking a responsive chord: How political ads motivate and persuade voters by appealing to emotions. American Journal of Political Science, 49(2), 388–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E.. (1960.) The American Voter. Wiley.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Fenno, R. (1978). Home style: House members in their districts. Little, Brown and Co.Google Scholar
Funk, Carolyn L. (1999).“Bringing the Candidate into Models of Candidate Evaluation.” The Journal of Politics 61(3): 700–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geer, J. G. (2006). In defense of negativity: Attack ads in presidential campaigns. University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, D. (2009). Has television personalized voting behavior? Political Behavior, 31(2), 231–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holtz-Bacha, C., & Just, M. R. (2017). Routledge handbook of political advertising. Taylor & Francis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isbell, L. M., & Wyer, R. S. Jr. (1999). Correcting for mood-induced bias in the evaluation of political candidates: The roles of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(2), 237–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kinder, D. R. (1986). Presidential character revisited. In Lau, R. & Sears, D.O. (Eds.), Political cognition (pp. 791–811). Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Kinder, D. R., Peters, M. D., Abelson, R. P., & Fiske, S. T. (1980). Presidential prototypes. Political Behavior, 2, 315–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroodsma, D. E. (1990). Using appropriate experimental designs for intended hypotheses in “song” playbacks, with examples for testing effects of song repertoire sizes. Animal Behaviour, 40(6), 1138–1150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krumhansl, C. L. (1997). An exploratory study of musical emotions and psychophysiology. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 51(4), 336–353.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krupnikov, Y., & Levine, A. (2014). Cross-sample comparisons and external validity. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 1(1), 59–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machlis, L., Dodd, P. W. D., & Fentress, J. C. (1985). The pooling fallacy: Problems arising when individuals contribute more than one observation to the data set. Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 68(3), 201–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKuen, M., Marcus, G. E., Neuman, W. R., Keele, L., & Wolak, J. (2001). Emotions, information, and political cooperation [Paper presentation]. Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA.Google Scholar
Marcus, G. E., Neuman, W. R., & MacKuen, M. (2000). Affective intelligence and political judgment. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCurley, C., & Mondak, J. J. (1995). The influence of incumbents’ competence and integrity in U.S. House elections. American Journal of Political Science, 39(4), 864–885.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mullinix, K. J., Leeper, T. J., Druckman, J. N., & Freese, J. (2015). The generalizability of survey experiments. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 2(2), 109–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niedenthal, P. M., & Setterlund, M. B. (1994). Emotion congruence in perception. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(4), 401–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prysby, C. (2008). Perceptions of candidate character traits and the presidential vote in 2004. PS: Political Science & Politics, 41(1), 115–122.Google Scholar
Rapoport, R. B., Metcalf, K. L., & Hartman, J. A. (1989). Candidate traits and voter inferences: An experimental study. Journal of Politics, 51(4), 917–932.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sachs, M. E., Damasio, A., & Habibi, A. (2015). The pleasures of sad music: A systematic review. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 1–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shmargad, Y. & Klar, S. (2020). Sorting the news: How ranking by popularity polarizes our politics. Political Communication, 37(3), 423–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suguna, S., & Deepika, K. (2017). The effects of music on pulse rate and blood pressure in healthy young adults. International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 5, 5268–5272.Google Scholar
Thorson, E., Christ, W. G., & Caywood, C. (1991). Effects of issue-image strategies, attack and support appeals, music, and visual content in political commercials. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 35(4), 465–486.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Västfjäll, D. (2002). Emotion induction through music: A review of the musical mood induction procedure. Musicae Scientiae, 1, 173–211.Google Scholar
Yamasaki, T., Yamada, K., & Laukka, P. (2015). Viewing the world through the prism of music: Effects of music on perceptions of the environment. Psychology of Music, 43(1), 61–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Heisbourg and Feitosa supplementary material

Appendices A-G

Download Heisbourg and Feitosa supplementary material(File)
File 2.9 MB