Politicians frequently use uncivil and even aggressive tactics in political appeals. Aggressive behavior and personality code as masculine, and voters generally value masculine traits in leaders. However, extreme displays may be off-putting to all but the most aggressive voters. In this article, we theorize how aggressive political displays interact with gendered personality traits to shape candidate evaluations. Which voters punish candidates for aggressive behavior, and which voters give which candidates a pass? We leverage two survey experiments to investigate how voters judge intensely uncivil candidates in a political debate-verbal aggression and a physical dominance display. We find voters penalize (or even reward) candidates differently for aggressive behavior depending on their own aggressive personality traits. Our findings advance research on the distinct effects of gender over sex in politics and studies of aggression dynamics in mass politics. Our results also speak to work on the strategies available to male and female candidates with broader implications for representation and norms in democratic politics.
In this article, we explore the effects of race linked fate and racial self-identification on Americans' attitudes toward the police. We suggest that the strength of the connection between race linked fate and police attitudes depends on whether a given racial group experiences or perceives a pattern of marginalization and discrimination by the police that targets their racial group. We expect that the negative relationship between race linked fate and police attitudes will be strongest among African Americans and Latinos (i.e., two groups with often contentious relations with law enforcement), weaker among Asians and other race individuals, and negligible or (possibly) positive for whites. Methods: Using data from the 2016 Voter Study Group survey, we estimate a series of ordinary least squares regression and binary logit models of police attitudes. Results: We find, as expected, that the effects of race linked fate on attitudes toward the police are very strong for African Americans and Latinos, weak and/or inconsistent for Asians and other race respondents, and nonexistent for white respondents. Conclusion: These results point to the importance of racial selfidentification and race linked fate in shaping attitudes about the police, particularly among African Americans and Latinos. KEYWORDS race linked fate, attitudes toward the police, racial identityLaw enforcement agencies across the United States are facing a crisis of identity and legitimacy resulting from a series of high-profile use-of-force incidents involving members of the black community. The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August of 2014 has led to an upsurge in protests of police tactics throughout the United States. With the growth of Black Lives Matter (BLM), one official with the United States Department of Justice noted that the protests that occurred in Ferguson as a result of the Michael Brown shooting helped to launch "a new civil rights movement" in America (Davis 2015). In response to police shootings of African Americans, there have been calls for a major era of police reform (including, in recent years, "defunding" the police), and many Americans express views that the police engage in systematic discrimination against people of color, that the police are overly aggressive in their law enforcement activities and over-militarized, and that strong countermeasures are warranted. In sharp contrast, other Americans express support for the police and the difficult job that they face, particularly 110
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