Male or Female, Aggressive or Polite? An Examination on the Impact of Debates on Perceptions and Attitudes of the Audience

Given the exponential increase in exposure to online debates, a series of experimental investigations were conducted to examine the impact of gender of debaters and tone of debate on audiences’ attitudes and evaluation processes. The theoretical frameworks of gender role theory and politeness theory were used to guidethe propositions and hypotheses. Findings suggest that audience members generally prefer polite debate communication over aggressive debate communication. More specifically, results indicate that audience members who were exposed to polite female and polite male debaters reported more positive attitudes toward the debaters than audience members who were exposed to aggressive female and aggressive male debaters. No interaction effects were found between gender of debaters and tone of debate on audiences’ perceptions on the winner of the debate. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed at the end.