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NewswireTODAY - /newswire/ -
London, United Kingdom, 2008/08/22 - As Barack Obama heads in to next week’s Democratic convention with John McCain bearing down on him in the polls, he can take comfort in the fact that scientists have confirmed he is the better public speaker - CWAEurope.com.
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Senator Obama, however, has still got a long way to go to become the perfect orator. His range of facial expressions, in particular, needs to increase.
Speech analysis of Senators Obama and McCain by the Vox Institute for Clearwater Advisors found that the pitch of Obama’s voice is excellent and that it “reflects very clearly the emotional nature of each topic.” McCain’s voice, in contract, is “low-pitched and very monotonous.”
The good news for Obama, however, ends there with the research showing that concern is the dominating attitude of his vocal style and that his facial repertory “is not very varied”. It concludes that the “absence of positive emotional displays is a major feature of his facial expressions.” McCain’s facial repertory is also “very poor”, and, “most of the time he has a poker face.”
James McBrien, Managing Director at Clearwater Advisors, said: “Non verbal communication is more important than verbal communication in gaining the trust of an audience. This research shows that while Obama’s verbal communication is excellent, his non verbal communication skills, particularly his facial expressions need work. In terms of public speaking he already has a lead on John McCain but he needs to expand his range of facial expressions to become a great orator.”
The analysis was conducted by Dr Branka Zei Pollerman at the Vox Institute in Geneva using samples of McCain's and Obama's voices. Four samples of each man were taken for sampling delivering ‘angry criticism’, ‘positive future prospects’, ‘sad facts’, and ‘an emotionally neutral statement’. These were digitised and submitted to acoustical signal analysis and facial analysis. Dr Pollerman used Facial Action Coding Systems (FACS) developed by Professor Paul Ekman at the University of California, to conduct the analysis.
During the research, Dr Pollerman also analysed the speaking style of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The results revealed that Brown has “perfect fluency” and “skillfully chunks the information into sense groups…allowing for easy comprehension of his messages”. However his “voice does not reflect the emotional nature of each topic” and that his “facial repertory is limited to a recurrent pattern combining the expressions of sadness, anger and disgust.”
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