Monday, March 30, 2020

A psychologist explains how politicians evade questions



The psychologist Professor Peter Bull talks about his research into the way politicians answer questions - or fail to answer them.

In my day job, I wrote a media release that led to widespread coverage of Professor Bull's research last year.

Here is an example from the Sun:
Theresa May has answered barely a quarter of questions put to her - making her the most evasive Tory PM in 40 years. 
Boffins at the University of York studied the way Mrs May dealt with broadcast interviews and compared it with the responses of David Cameron, John Major and Margaret Thatcher. 
They found that in the course of two interviews after she became Prime Minister in 2016 and four during the course of the 2017 general election, Mrs May only answered 27 per cent of the questions put to her. 
In contrast, Mr Cameron answered 34 per cent of questions in the 2015 general election, while both Mr Major in the 1992 election and Margaret Thatcher in 1987 answered 39 per cent of questions they were asked.
Nice use of 'boffins' there.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for posting - well worth listening to if only to have my view confirmed that DC was a nasty piece of work always making personal attacks. Never understood why he wasn't called out more for it. Also that TM almost never answered a straight question - yes, we knew that but here it's confirmed

    ReplyDelete