Why Do We Think Politicians Are So Evasive? Insight From Theories of Equivocation and Deception, With a Content Analysis of U.S. Presidential Debates, 1996-2012

Politicians have a reputation for deception. Instead of blaming the politicians themselves, equivocation theory directs our attention to the situation in which politicians are asked questions. We draw on recent theories of deception detection—truth-default theory and information manipulation theory 2—to propose that a reason we think politicians are so evasive might be because, ironically, we believe them when they accuse their opponents of evasiveness in equivocal situations. We perform a content analysis of the question–answer sequences (N = 810) in U.S. presidential debates 1996 to 2012. Our results indicate that politicians accuse each other of evasion to a significant degree. Meanwhile, they are not necessarily dodging questions to the extent that their overt allegations suggest. This study demonstrates how the predictions of equivocation theory and deception detection theories apply to the domain of U.S. presidential debates.