Assessing the relationship between public speaking perception, personality traits, and nonverbal behavior

Abstract

Modern public speaking heavily focuses on the delivery and performance of the speaker, and the speaker’s nonverbal behavior plays a key role in shaping the perception about their performance as well as their underlying personality traits. As most of the literature focuses on the speaker, this study sought to assess whether or not the personality traits of the audience and the personality traits with which they judged the speaker also play a role in shaping this perception comprising seven attributes. This quantitative research study that included a sample of 323 respondents from different universities adopted an experimental research design that replicated a virtual and modern public speaking scenario. Four actors, two female and two males, were commissioned to enact a similar speech content while shifting their nonverbal behavior based on pre-defined big five personality traits. It also introduced a revised Brunswik Lens Model that structures accurate personality judgement. The results revealed interesting findings supporting the notion that audience personality traits affect certain perception attributes namely sincerity and dominance of the speaker. While the gender of the audience had no effect, that of the public speaker did along some attributes. The results also showed that the judged public speaker personality traits affected all the selected perception attributes. Many challenges were faced in this study especially because production and many variables were involved; however, in parallel, it introduced theoretical and practical contributions and opened the door to new lines of research that look more closely at the relationship between the three pillars of public speaking, personality traits, and nonverbal behavior from both the speaker and the audience sides.