The influence of President Trump's micro-expressions during his COVID-19 national address on viewers' emotional response
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 24, 2025

Exploring the Use of Isolated Expressions and Film Clips to Evaluate Emotion Recognition by People with Traumatic Brain Injury
Published on: May 15, 2016
Patrick A Stewart1, Elena Svetieva2, Jeffrey K Mullins3
1Department of Political Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA.
Abstract:
This preregistered study replicates and extends studies concerning emotional response to wartime rally speeches and applies it to U.S. President Donald Trump's first national address regarding the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020. We experimentally test the effect of a micro-expression (ME) by Trump associated with appraised threat on change in participant self-reported distress, sadness, anger, affinity, and reassurance while controlling for followership. We find that polarization is perpetuated in emotional response to the address which focused on portraying the COVID-19 threat as being of Chinese provenance. We also find a significant, albeit slight, effect by Trump's ME on self-reported sadness, suggesting that this facial behavior served did not diminish his speech, instead serving as a form of nonverbal punctuation. Further exploration of participant response using the Linguistic Inventory and Word Count software reinforces and extends these findings.
Related Concept Videos
Facial Feedback Hypothesis
Therapeutic Communication
Verbal communication depends on language or a prescribed way of using words so that people can share information effectively. The critical aspects of verbal...
Emotional Expression
Universal Facial Expressions
Psychologist Paul Ekman identified seven basic...
Psychological Responses to Stress
Physiology of Emotion
Autonomic Nervous System
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) plays a critical role in emotional responses by regulating involuntary physiological functions. It consists of two main components: the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. The sympathetic system...
Flashbulb Memory

