How Sex May Change the VP Debate
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| Thu, 10-02-2008 - 8:21am |
Palin vs. Biden: How Sex May Change the Debate
By Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer
http://www.livescience.com/culture/081001-vp-debates.htm
If history repeats itself, the vice presidential candidates will pull no punches at Thursday night's debate.
But this time there's a woman in the mix, and that could really turn things upside-down. Sarah Palin might take on a more manly, aggressive style while Joe Biden steps into a less combative, more traditionally feminine role, according to a professor who has analyzed past mixed-gender debates.
"If we see the events on Thursday night that follow the debates that I've studied in the past that involve both male and female candidates, it very well may be the case that Sarah Palin will come out as the more aggressive debater in terms of her tendency to attack and to go on the offense in that debate," said Mitchell McKinney, associate professor of communication at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU).
McKinney's past research has shown that when a man and woman go head-to-head, they adopt each other's traditional communication styles. That study, co-authored with Mary Banwart, communication professor at the University of Kansas, was published in the December 2005 issue of the journal Communication Studies.

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