Social Influence in Televised Election Debates: A Potential Distortion of Democracy

Colin J Davis,Amina Memon,Jeffrey S Bowers,Colin Allen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018154

Colin J Davis, Amina Memon + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0018154

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Abstract

A recent innovation in televised election debates is a continuous response measure (commonly referred to as the “worm”) that allows viewers to track the response of a sample of undecided voters in real-time. A potential danger of presenting such data is that it may prevent people from making independent evaluations. We report an experiment with 150 participants in which we manipulated the worm and superimposed it on a live broadcast of a UK election debate. The majority of viewers were unaware that the worm had been manipulated, and yet we were able to influence their perception of who won the debate, their choice of preferred prime minister, and their voting intentions. We argue that there is an urgent need to reconsider the simultaneous broadcast of average response data with televised election debates.

Highlights

Televised election debates were introduced in the United States in 1960, and play a prominent role in the election campaigns of many countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom
A feature of some recent televised election debates has been a real-time response measure – commonly referred to as ‘‘the worm’’ – which represents the average response of a small sample of undecided voters who watch the debate and use a handset to record their satisfaction with what the leaders are saying
To test whether viewers of worm graphs are vulnerable to social influences, we asked two groups of 75 adults to watch a live broadcast of the third 2010 UK election debate that included a worm of a similar format as in broadcasts of prior debates

Summary

Introduction

Televised election debates were introduced in the United States in 1960, and play a prominent role in the election campaigns of many countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Participants who saw the pro-Reagan feedback rated Reagan’s performance as better than Mondale’s, whereas participants who saw the pro-Mondale feedback rated Mondale’s performance as better than Reagan’s This finding suggests that the worm can have a powerful social influence effect on viewers of election debates. In contrast to the usual experience of viewing debates, the participants in this study were required to make continuous ratings of their own opinion This aspect of the study may have exaggerated social influence effects, especially if participants actively compared how the movements of the worm compared with their own movements of the dial. To test whether viewers of worm graphs are vulnerable to social influences, we asked two groups of 75 adults (students at Royal Holloway, University of London) to watch a live broadcast of the third (and final) 2010 UK election debate that included a worm of a similar format as in broadcasts of prior debates (see Figure 1). Our hypothesis was that perceptions of the debate would differ between the two groups in accord with the worm’s bias

Methods

Results

22 Log Likelihood of Reduced Model

Discussion