Gender, Sexism, and Contempt in Candidate Evaluation
In: Journal of women, politics & policy, S. 1-17
ISSN: 1554-4788
In: Journal of women, politics & policy, S. 1-17
ISSN: 1554-4788
In: Political behavior, Band 10, Heft 2, S. 117-135
ISSN: 0190-9320
RECENT WORK IN COGNITIVE PROCESSING AND INDIVIDUAL DECISION MAKING HAS EMPHASIZED THAT INDIVIDUALS VARY IN THE CRITERIA THEY BRING TO BEAR TO EVALUATE POLITICAL OBJECTS. IN THIS PAPER WE ARGUE THAT INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES ARE BUT ONE PIECE OF THE DECISION-MAKING PUZZLE, AND THAT ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS ARE ALSO IMPORTANT. OF PARTICULAR INTEREST TO US IS THE IDEA THAT DIFFERENT CANDIDATES EVOKE DIFFERENT EVALUATIVE CRITERIA. USING DATA FROM A 1984 SAMPLE OF UNDERGRADUATES AND THE 1980 NATIONAL ELECTION STUDY, WE FIND EVIDENCE THAT POLITICAL EVOCATION EFFECTS DO EXIST. THIS RESULT HAS IMPLICATIONS FOR UNDERSTANDING BOTH THE DECISION CALCULUS OF INDIVIDUALS AND THE COLLECTIVE RATIONALITY OF THE ELECTORATE.
In: Journal of women, politics & policy, Band 44, Heft 1, S. 56-74
ISSN: 1554-4788
In: Political behavior, Band 12, Heft 1, S. 5-18
ISSN: 1573-6687
In: Political behavior, Band 10, Heft 2, S. 117-135
ISSN: 1573-6687
In: Political psychology: journal of the International Society of Political Psychology, Band 14, Heft 1, S. 21
ISSN: 1467-9221
In: Political behavior, Band 12, Heft 4, S. 385-402
ISSN: 1573-6687
In: Political psychology: journal of the International Society of Political Psychology, Band 32, Heft 2, S. 181-203
ISSN: 1467-9221
Voters typically evaluate an attractive candidate more favorably than an (otherwise equivalent) unattractive candidate. However, some voters "correct" for the biasing influence of physical appearance. This reduces, eliminates, or even reverses the physical attractiveness effect. Correction occurs when political experts evaluate a political candidate under nondistracting conditions. Under these "high cognitive capacity" conditions, voters primarily correct for physical unattractiveness. However, correction fails to occur when voters possess low levels of expertise or are distracted. Thus, in most circumstances, attractive candidates are evaluated more favorably than unattractive candidates. Two experiments provide support for this model of appearance‐based candidate evaluation.
In: American journal of political science, Band 48, Heft 3, S. 513-520
ISSN: 1540-5907
Attitude strength is an important, but contested, subject in social psychology. Political scientists often rely on measures of attitude strength such as attitude importance, accessibility, or certainty in their work while ignoring the politically meaningful differences across types of strength. This omission is particularly relevant in the discussion of the formation of candidate evaluations. The research reported here indicates that accessibility is not the relevant type of attitude strength when describing how voters use issues in evaluating candidates. Instead, voters' reliance on issues when evaluating candidates depends on the voter's certainty about where the candidates stand. Given the different antecedents of certainty and accessibility, this result suggests that that citizens are able to more carefully process and use information available to them during an election campaign than would be expected by the prevailing theories of attitude formation.
Following an overview of French presidential elections, their organization, & the issue of candidate information dissemination, the impact of leadership qualities & personal attributes on voting behavior & electoral outcomes is assessed for elections, 1965-1995, drawing on a variety of sources. Much attention is given to the degree to which the constitutional standing of the French presidency promotes strong leadership & how the electoral system proceeds in a manner that directs increasing scrutiny on individual candidates. Analysis of each election indicates that such candidate-centered variables are but one factor among many that influence outcomes. In general, while the French system seems an appropriate milieu for candidates to stress their leadership qualities, findings do not bear this out. However, focusing on the traditional left-right division, some support is found for the hypothesis that the strength of the left-right orientation's impact is undercut in elections where personal qualities are stronger. 4 Tables. J. Zendejas
In: American politics research, Band 48, Heft 2, S. 238-251
ISSN: 1552-3373
Research assessing how voters evaluate political candidates often focuses on the effects of particular attributes (e.g., race, gender, partisanship). I submit that voters' perceptions of candidates may depend not only on candidates' own traits and features, but those of other candidates running against them. Drawing on literature on reference dependence, I argue that the same candidate may be perceived in significantly different ways depending on whether or not voters evaluate the candidate as a single entity or as one option in a multicandidate field. An original survey experiment reveals that under certain circumstances, Republicans and Democrats both adjust their evaluations of party candidates as a function of the presence of other candidates. I conclude with a discussion of this project's implications for a larger body of work looking at reference dependence in American elections.
In: Political research quarterly: PRQ ; official journal of the Western Political Science Association and other associations, Band 69, Heft 1, S. 134-147
ISSN: 1938-274X
How does the threat of terrorism affect evaluations of female (vs. male) political leaders, and do these effects vary by the politician's partisanship? Using two national surveys, we document a propensity for the U.S. public to prefer male Republican leadership the most in times of security threat, and female Democratic leadership the least. We theorize a causal process by which terrorist threat influences the effect of stereotypes on candidate evaluations conditional on politician partisanship. We test this framework with an original experiment:a nationally representative sample was presented with a mock election that varied the threat context and the gender and partisanship of the candidates. We find that masculine stereotypes have a negative influence on both male and female Democratic candidates in good times (thus reaffirming the primacy of party stereotypes), but only on the female Democratic candidate when terror threat is primed. Republican candidates—both male and female—are unaffected by masculine stereotypes, regardless of the threat environment.
In: Political psychology: journal of the International Society of Political Psychology, Band 38, Heft 2, S. 279-295
ISSN: 1467-9221
Voters do not associate female candidates with feminine stereotypes, but voters also do not associate female candidates with the qualities most valued in political leaders such as experience and knowledge. Current research offers conflicting conclusions on whether female candidates benefit from breaking with feminine norms or face a backlash for being too aggressive and not likable enough. Using a series of experiments, I show how counterstereotypic gender strategies, including women emphasizing masculine trait competencies, improve evaluations of female candidates along both masculine and feminine leadership dimensions. These results offer novel insights into how female candidates can overcome perceptual deficits among voters that they lack critical masculine leadership qualities. I also show that female candidates can overcome these biases without losing on traditional feminine strengths such as warmth and likability. However, counterstereotypic female candidates can face a "likability" backlash from out‐partisan voters. These findings suggest counterstereotypes may be more beneficial for female candidates in a primary election context when voters are copartisans rather than general elections where candidates often need cross‐partisan support.
In: American politics research, Band 52, Heft 1, S. 67-79
ISSN: 1552-3373
Campaigns use different strategies across communication channels. How does this affect voters? What are the consequences of being exposed to targeted campaign messages? How do voters react when they are exposed to campaign messages that are aimed at different voters? Does mistargeting always punish candidates or does it reward them under certain conditions? In a survey experiment relying on a sample of 1137 U.S. adults, participants evaluated a fictional candidate running for the U.S. Senate after being exposed to various sets of campaign messages originally delivered via e-mail and TV. A fictional candidate was used to prevent the effects of prior knowledge while the campaign information given to the participants was based on a real campaign's e-mails and television ads to achieve a degree of realism. Voters perceive the same candidate differently depending on the messages they receive. Politicians may benefit or suffer from mistargeting.
Since Barack Obama's presidential campaign of 2008, media outlets have changed how race is covered and framed during political campaigns. In the so-called "post-racial" era of American politics when race is supposed to matter less, we are still very much attuned to stories that are framed by racial conflict. When the media wraps a "racial mode of interpretation" around a conflict between two candidates, there are potential electoral penalties involved for either a white or black candidate who becomes entangled in such a controversy.This project describes this process and provides empirical evidence that individuals' political judgments of candidates can be changed when exposed to such framing. Through a series of three survey experiments that simulate the effect of race-salient media coverage on voters, I find that there are statistically significant electoral penalties--in some cases, more than 10 percentage points--when respondents learn new information about a candidate that either assigns blame for a "race play" or connects him and his opponent to racial controversy. There is also evidence that the media plays a significant role in assigning blame for playing the race card. More respondents were willing to assign blame to a particular candidate when they read news stories in which a media analyst blamed that candidate.While past literature has focused on racial priming processes that activate white resentment through implicit or explicit cues in campaign ads, this research demonstrates that there may be an important learning process that has been overlooked. Media coverage with an explicit racial mode of interpretation may activate a broader backlash effect among respondents regardless of their racial resentment scores.
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