Gender, Extraversion, and Facial Behavior in Political Conversations

• In Event: The Political Psychology of Gender

Abstract

The political world is rife with conflict, making everyday political discussion a form of social risk-taking. While some people may choose to talk about politics, others may find themselves in conversations that shift into the political. The quality of deliberation around political issues and political participation can be influenced by an individual’s orientation toward conflict, social identities, their choice of discussion partner, and their personality traits (e.g. Big 5). While more research has been conducted on links between openness and conscientious and political behavior, less work has examined extraversion. Previous work suggests a positive relationship between extraversion and all forms of political involvement (Mondak et al., 2010; Hibbing et al., 2011). Not only do extraverts engage more in politics but they also enjoy it more relative to their less extraverted counterparts, especially men (Friesen, Rebasso & Djupe, n.d.). Gender mediates the effect of extraversion on political discussions in important ways as women are not only less likely than men to engage in political conversations but also more conflict-avoidant than men (Neumann, 2021; Ulbig & Funk, 1999, Wolak, 2022). Often missing from this research is a direct test of what happens during face-to-face political discussions. Do men, compared to women, prefer talking about politics? Does extraversion influence how much both men and women talk about political versus nonpolitical topics? How do people feel after talking politics with someone high in extraversion?

We directly tested the relationship between gender, extraversion, and political discussion contexts by hosting in-person round-robin dyadic conversations. In April and October 2023 on a Canadian university campus, we facilitated 40 groups of 3-7 participants who were randomly assigned political and nonpolitical conversation prompts, following online personality and demographic surveys and preceding post-conversation partner ratings. This set of surveys and lab-based, video-recorded conversations allow us to investigate the effects of extraversion on interaction quality and time spent discussing certain topics. When people perceive their interactions as being higher in quality, they tend to experience more positive and less negative affect, perceiving these events as less stressful. Applying Noldus FaceReader software to the videos of our participants in conversation, we are able to classify facial behavior as positively or negatively valenced. Our results suggest a consistent pattern of results that women at all levels of extraversion demonstrate more negatively and positively valenced facial expressions, as compared to men, during political discussions. This finding is consistent with gender differences in emotional expression and presentation. Also, both genders at all levels of extraversion demonstrate significantly more positive facial expressions during nonpolitical, compared to political, discussions. We conclude by comparing the facial behavior analysis to individual ratings of participant discussion partners. This work contributes to the personality and politics, political discussion network, and gender gap literatures that often investigate these questions through survey self-reports. By analyzing political discussions in real time and combining self-report and behavioral measures, we hope to gain a better understanding about the dynamics, opportunities, and obstacles to political deliberation.

Authors

• Amanda Friesen, Western University

• Axel Déry, University of Western Ontario

• Jamie Chow

• Jesse Majeed Mehravar