Yesterday on This Week with George Stephanopolous, Cokie Roberts threw out the last word of their roundtable discussion.
Referring to debates, she said, "You know, there have been some studies where you watch it with the sound off, and people... the same person wins as the person with the sound on."
For some reason that rang to me as someone who has a theory and decides in an off-the-cuff manner to support the assertion with fictitious studies.
More below...
Now, for all I know there really are "some studies" that demonstrate this phenomena. In fact, whether there are such studies or not, I wouldn't be at all surprised if her assertion proved correct.
But I am suspicious. So I Googled for an hour for any such study and found absolutely nothing.
Has anyone ever heard of such a study? Is it possible to prove a negative (that these studies don't exist)?
Is it worth the effort? Considering the whole point of her bringing this up was to feed the script that appearances matter more than ideas (remember Gore's earth-tones), I sure would love to bust this elitist, egomaniacal media whore for manufacturing fictitional studies on the air.
If anyone can provide evidence either way, please do so.
[Update] easong's amusing poll added by request.