Hello Fellow Hedonists,
Researchers at the Positive Psychology Center (University of Pennsylvania) have shown that optimistic campaign speeches are correlated with winning presidential races. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that the candidates are optimistic because they're winning. Surprisingly, these studies reveal that McCain and Obama are equally optimistic!
Apparently, other, related studies have shown that Republican candidates show a higher level of internality when explaining positive events and a lower level of internality when explaining negative events, that is, they accept credit for good events and blame others as the cause for negative outcomes. Shocking!
Excelsior!
C.L.Sosis
Throughout life, it is important to be optimistic, especially when one is running to be the president of the United States of America. However, it seems that having optimistic speeches in your campaign doesn’t strongly correlate with winning the presidential race. According to the study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, both candidates showed to be equally optimistic. This makes since seeing as how the election trail had its ups and downs for both candidates and both Obama and McCain had good and equal chances of winning. The article went on to say that Sarah Palin, the republican vice presidential nominee showed to be more optimistic than Joe Biden, the democratic vice presidential candidate. In fact, Joe Biden was said to be very pessimistic rather than optimistic. This seems fairly accurate when on June 22, 2008, Joe Biden was interviewed by NBC’s Meet the Press and was cited saying he didn’t want the vice presidential position and he wasn’t interested. How can someone be optimistic about becoming vice president when they were not even interested in the position to begin with? McCain and Obama were equally optimistic, and Palin was more optimistic than Biden. Yet, as the country witnessed on Election Day, Obama and Biden won the presidential election. If optimistic campaign speeches were truly correlated with winning the election, shouldn’t Biden have been more optimistic then Palin to prove this statement correct?
The study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania goes on to discuss how Republicans show a higher level of internality when explaining positive events and a lower level of internality when explaining negative events, meaning they accept credit for a good events and blame others as the cause for negative outcomes. I believe there are many factors that make this statement unfair. First of all, the article states that the study was based off of impromptu comments and speeches by the presidential nominees. Why would you base the study on only one aspect of the election when there are so many that contribute? This makes the study seem vague because it was only based on one part of the election. Furthermore, this is only one study conducted by one University. To prove that based on impromptu speeches alone Republicans exhibit the self serving bias, I believe that more than one study must be done to prove this. Another point to consider would be are there websites with studies and articles that may say the opposite about republicans? Also, was the study only conducted on the presidential candidates for the 2008 election? If so, this means that only John McCain was shown to be using the self serving bias. This doesn’t show that ALL republican presidential candidates in the past show a higher level of internality when explaining positive events and a lower level of internality when explaining negative events. To prove that it is all republicans, you would need to conduct a prospective study of all past candidates to see whether or not they use the self serving bias more than democratic candidates. This seems like a stereotype has been put on all republicans because of one republican that was studied.
Posted by: Elizabeth Sicilia | December 01, 2008 at 12:16 PM