%0 Journal Article
%T The influence of President Trump's micro-expressions during his COVID-19 national address on viewers' emotional response.
%A Stewart PA
%A Svetieva E
%A Mullins JK
%J Politics Life Sci
%V 0
%N 0
%D 2024 Jun 4
%M 38832534
暂无%R 10.1017/pls.2024.8
%X This preregistered study replicates and extends studies concerning emotional response to wartime rally speeches and applies it to U.S. President Donald Trump's first national address regarding the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020. We experimentally test the effect of a micro-expression (ME) by Trump associated with appraised threat on change in participant self-reported distress, sadness, anger, affinity, and reassurance while controlling for followership. We find that polarization is perpetuated in emotional response to the address which focused on portraying the COVID-19 threat as being of Chinese provenance. We also find a significant, albeit slight, effect by Trump's ME on self-reported sadness, suggesting that this facial behavior served did not diminish his speech, instead serving as a form of nonverbal punctuation. Further exploration of participant response using the Linguistic Inventory and Word Count software reinforces and extends these findings.