Reddit reviews In-Your-Face Politics: The Consequences of Uncivil Media
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YK: The value of the debate for many political scientists is questionable. Given that people (as a number of questions in this AMA have rightly suggested!) are skilled at dismissing and ignoring the information that they disagree with, it is difficult to imagine that people are going to be persuaded by anything that happens at the debate. Some scholars have seen some post-debate shifts among certain groups of voters (for example, Hillygus and Jackman’s 2003 [piece] (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-5907.00041/full) on decision-making in the 2000) election, but arguably responses to the debate may be based on more than just the facts discussed (Jamie Druckman shows this in his [paper] (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2508.t01-1-00015/full) on debate winners):
There is also some research that suggests that the actual debate – candidates arguing and fighting – may lead people to either mistrust or retreat from politics. In some of her [work] (https://www.amazon.com/Your-Face-Politics-Consequences-Uncivil-Media/dp/0691173532/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1478274480&sr=8-2&keywords=Diana+Mutz) Diana Mutz shows that political debates – especially if they are “uncivil” – can have negative effects on people.
In our book, Samara Klar and I suggest that seeing argumentative politics makes people want to hide their partisanship and pretend to be independents.
So, I think some of this points to the idea that debates aren’t actually all that helpful.
On the other hand, its possible that debates are “exciting” – which makes more people tune in just to see the spectacle, which helps people learn something about politics. So, this may be a silver lining of the combative debate.