Debate 2: Obama vs McCain
October 7, 2008
Personality and language are consistent across time and context. The ways that Obama and McCain used language in the second debate were remarkably similar to the ways they used language in the first debate. The bottom line continues to be that McCain is more socially connected, impulsive, and emotionally honest whereas Obama comes across as smarter, more cognitively complex, and more emotionally calm and detached.
Using the LIWC computer program, the numbers that came up are:
| Category | Examples | Obama | McCain | Interpretation | |
| Word count | 7111 | 6520 | * | Obama talks more | |
| Words per sentence | 17.78 | 14.78 | * | Obama longer sentences | |
| Big words (over 6 letters) | 17.17 | 17.88 | |||
| Personal pronouns | 9.60 | 11.15 | * | McCain more personal in general | |
| 1st person singular | I, me, my | 2.03 | 3.24 | ** | McCain more personal |
| 1st person plural | We, our | 4.11 | 4.02 | ||
| 2nd person | You, yours | 1.95 | 1.83 | ||
| 3rd person singular | He, she, her | 0.56 | 0.77 | ||
| 3rd person plural | They, them | 0.96 | 1.30 | ||
| Indefinite pronouns | It, those | 7.88 | 6.72 | * | Obama more vague |
| Articles | A, the | 6.17 | 5.98 | ||
| Verbs | Walk, went | 17.45 | 17.07 | ||
| Auxiliary verbs | Is, have | 11.08 | 10.66 | ||
| Past tense | Was, gave | 3.29 | 2.75 | ||
| Present tense | Am, is | 12.36 | 11.89 | ||
| Future tense | will | 0.84 | 1.50 | * | McCain more future oriented |
| Common adverbs | Very, really | 4.67 | 3.63 | * | Obama more “flowery” |
| Prepositions | To, for, of | 13.80 | 13.28 | ||
| Conjunctions | And, or, whereas | 7.21 | 7.56 | ||
| Negations | No, not, never | 1.74 | 1.35 | * | Obama censoring himself; McCain more impulsive |
| Quantifiers | Much, few | 2.59 | 2.78 | ||
| Numbers | Six, 12 | 1.95 | 1.23 | ||
| Social references | Friend, we, talk | 11.18 | 11.78 | ||
| Overall emotion words | Happy, hurt, kill | 5.20 | 6.33 | * | McCain more more emotional |
| Positive emotions | Happy, nice | 3.78 | 4.49 | * | McCain more positive |
| Negative emotions | Sad, nasty, bad | 1.48 | 1.99 | * | McCain more negative |
| Anxiety, fear | Worry, scared | 0.21 | 0.31 | ||
| Anger | Angry, hate | 0.53 | 0.84 | ||
| Sadness | Depressed, cry | 0.17 | 0.18 | ||
| Cognitive mechanisms | Think, should | 18.39 | 19.49 | * | McCain more social thinking |
| Insight | Realize, know | 2.01 | 2.27 | ||
| Causal | Because, reason | 2.48 | 1.67 | * | Obama more causal reasoning |
| DIscrepancy | Would,could | 1.73 | 1.47 | ||
| Tentative | Maybe, perhaps | 2.21 | 2.12 | ||
| Certainty | Absolute, certainly | 1.43 | 1.66 | ||
| Inhibition | Blocked, stop | 0.75 | 0.94 | ||
| Inclusive words | With, and | 6.37 | 7.81 | ** | McCain over inclusive |
| Exclusive words | Except, but | 2.88 | 2.29 | * | Obama more cognitively complex |
| Relativity | Times, going, over | 13.02 | 12.01 | * | |
| Motion | Went, fly | 2.52 | 2.10 | ||
| Space | Area, under | 6.09 | 5.92 | ||
| Time | Hour, clock | 4.15 | 3.96 | ||
| Content Categories | |||||
| Work | Job, paycheck | 3.68 | 3.44 | ||
| Achievement | Try, succeed | 2.94 | 2.79 | ||
| Leisure | Games, tv | 0.38 | 0.25 | ||
| Home | Garage, yard | 0.32 | 0.48 | ||
| Money | Cash, debt | 2.66 | 2.15 | ||
| Religion | God, church | 0.11 | 0.05 | ||
| Death | Dead, cemetery | 0.18 | 0.18 |
The numbers refer to the percentage of total words. So, for example, 3.24% of all of McCain’s words were 1st person singular pronouns. These numbers were generated by the LIWC text analysis program (see www.liwc.net).
October 12, 2008 at 11:29 am
Past study indicated the effect of picturing vote from third-person perspective cause people to be more likely to vote in the presidential election (Libby, Shaeffer, Eibach, & Slemmer, 2007). If this linguistic style can explicitly or implicitly manipulate the voters’ perspective, could it be possible to alter voter’s preference or behavior?
Advertisers take product placement or embedded marketing to promote their commercial products. Could we use “perspective placement” to mentally brand an election image through language?
October 14, 2008 at 7:13 am
I would speculate that one reason McCain ranks so high in the use of the first person singular is that it includes “my” and he says “my friends” or “my friend” all the time. That phrase makes me cringe; over the course of a debate or interview it begins to sound condescending. It’s been bothering me since the debates — the only time I’ve listened to McCain much — and I found it alienating. Of course, I was already an Obama supporter and that must be factored into my reaction. But I wonder how it plays with real independents.
October 14, 2008 at 8:16 am
I agree with Nancy, regarding McCain’s use of “my friend(s)”, which is an insincere bit of political style, and an expression of personal dominance.
If you look at the personal pronouns breakdown…
– Obama is higher scored in the inclusive “We, us” and the more altruistic “you, yours” subcatagories.
– McCain is higher in “I, me, my” simply because of his cynical overuse of “my friend(s)”, and in “he, she” and “they, them” because he spent a lot of effort blaming the opposite party and its candidates for things his own party was responsible for, as well as trying to make a few out-and-out lies fly.
The analysis shows some pretty interesting reasons why I have come to trust Obama — for being less impulsive and more thoughtful, for nonetheless being more action-oriented (higher counts in relativity, motion, space, and time), for thinking more deeply about things, for being inclusive, for being nicer, more trustworthy, less fearful, more aware of how others feel and think, and what they want, and more honestly willing to try to find solutions for our national problems.
October 14, 2008 at 2:51 pm
What does “social thinking” mean in linguistic analysis? I’m studying distributed teamwork and have noticed that teams where people talk about their concern for one anothers’ goals may be more successful than teams who do not display this kind of social orientation. I’m wondering how “social thinking” as it’s used here and in the VP debate analysis relates to what I’m seeing and what words fall under “cognitive mechanisms”. I tried searching, but all those words are common enough that I get more results than I can reasonably parse. Any help unpacking these terms or pointers to sites or articles that do would be welcome. Thanks!
October 15, 2008 at 12:08 pm
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October 15, 2008 at 5:56 pm
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October 20, 2008 at 8:42 pm
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October 21, 2008 at 10:20 am
Great article!
Recently there was an article in the same newspaper I got your URL from – NRC here in The Netherlands – stating that people who communicate tend to feel better. The article suggested that the brain while thinking faster when communicating releases endorphins.
Could it be that communicating is a genetic hardcoded survival trait? It sure seems that way.
Before you say “Doh..”, I’m no scientist, just an interested reader
Excuse me for my bad English, ir is not my native language.
Hans.