How can you not love this story? The header alone makes me smile. The story refers to
a study out of Europe which showed that women made longer, more effective political speeches when they saw Hillary's face.
A new study finds women give longer and more confident political
speeches when they are exposed to images of female role models.
By Shaunacy Ferro
Posted 04.19.2013 at 11:00 am
Encouraging Hillary
Lawrence Jackson
What do women in politics need? Strong female role models.
A new paper in the May issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggests that even just seeing images of female role models can help women speak publicly and perform as leaders.
SNIP
... scientists asked 149 students from a Swiss university (81 women, 68
men) to give a persuasive political speech against increasing student
fees, within the context of a virtual reality program that put them in
front of an audience of six men and six women. For some participants,
the back wall of the virtual room featured a hanging picture of Hillary Clinton. For others, it showed a portrait of Bill Clinton or Angela Merkel, and for some the wall remained blank.
The researchers timed and videotaped the speech, then asked the
students to evaluate their performance. A separate group of people
unaware of the experimental conditions watched the speeches and rated
them based on fluency and body language.
Virtual Politics: Latu et al.
Both the people watching the speeches and those giving them perceived
longer speeches as being more positive. When there was no role model in
view, men spoke longer than women. The same held true for speaking
under the withering gaze of Big Bill.
Female role models eliminated the gender gap, though. Women gave
longer speeches and evaluated themselves more positively when they were
primed with with images Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel than when they saw Bill Clinton or weren't primed at all. The outside observers also rated their speeches higher.
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