Presidential candidate's expressions do as much to drive public reaction to debates as their words

A new study has revealed that facial expressions, gestures and voice tone are as important as words in the presidential debates.

Research at Texas Tech University show through visual analysis and social media gives a good indication that voters pick up on nonverbal communications as much as a candidate's rhetoric.

Researcher Erik Bucy said that not everybody pays really that close of attention to elections or knows all their party's positions on the issues, but they can get a sense of the candidates' traits by observing competitive political behavior and traits are reliable predictors of candidate support.

Using the communications theory of nonverbal expectancy violations, Bucy tracked how sensitive viewers were to what was happening in the debates if there was just a hint of the unexpected in political performance. For example, in the first 2012 debate, voters honed in on President Obama glancing down for lengthy periods, which gave the impression he was either disengaged or dismissive of Romney's viewpoints or arguments.

Bucy added that when a violation occurs, there is increased visual attention to it as people attempt to figure out what is going on and as a consequence of all this scrutiny, usually there is a negative evaluation of the person committing the violation.

Other notable nonverbal cues include raised eyebrows (indicating surprise), an angry stare, tilting or moving the head side to side (suggesting evasion) and the difference between reassurance and threat as signaled by the amount of teeth showing (happiness often involves the display of upper teeth, accompanies with a smile, while anger or threat displays usually just reveal the lower teeth with a clenched jaw).

Most of these expressions fit into three distinct display types, i.e, anger/threat, happiness/reassurance and fear/evasion. Bucy concluded that the public responds to leaders who exhibit more happiness/reassurance while challengers, as rivals to power, will typically display more anger/threat, but neither are expected to express fear/evasion and are not looked upon favorably if they do.

The study is soon to be published in the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.