How partisanship and sexism influence voters’ reactions to political #MeToo scandals

Abstract

Influential theories of motivated reasoning, as well as real-world anecdotal examples, would suggest that voters do not always penalize legislators from their own party for alleged immoral behavior, such as sexual harassment. But very little empirical evidence exists on how voters react to sexual misconduct allegations, especially since the start of the #MeToo movement. We examine how partisanship and sexist attitudes shape individuals’ reactions to sexual harassment allegations about a politician. Using a pretest–posttest online experiment, we randomize both the party affiliation of the accused legislator as well as the severity of the allegations. Overall, we find some evidence of partisan bias, but that there may be a limit. Subjects were more forgiving of an accused co-partisan legislator than a legislator of the opposing party in their overall evaluation and their perceptions of punitive repercussions, but their levels of electoral support decreased just as much for co-partisans as they did for opposing partisans. Importantly, these reactions are strongly conditioned by sexism; as subjects’ levels of sexism increase, the otherwise large and negative effect of allegations on evaluations of favorability and electoral support disappears.

Optimizing the Measurement of Sexism in Political Surveys

“…Trump frequently directed sexist rhetoric at Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, accusing her of “playing the woman card” and referring to her as a “nasty woman.” A litany of studies conducted since the election find that sexist attitudes were a strong predictor of voting for Trump over Clinton in 2016 (Schaffner, MacWilliams, and Nteta 2018; Setzler and Yanus 2018; Valentino, Wayne, and Oceno 2018; Cassese and Barnes 2019; Stewart, Clarke, and Borges 2019). And political scientists have continued to probe the influence of sexism on American political behavior since the 2016 election (Costa et al 2020; Schaffner 2020b).…”

The (limited) effects of target characteristics on public opinion of hate speech laws

“…On the one hand, partisans protect in-group members (Lelkes and Westwood 2016;Westwood et al 2019) by giving preferential treatment to co-partisans by viewing their moral transgressions as less severe (Costa et al 2020;Walter andRedlawsk 2021, 2019) and censor political opposition (Ashokkumar et al 2020). On the other hand, out-group animosity fuel motivations to harm political opponents.…”

Response Decoupling and Partisans' Evaluations of Politicians' Transgressions

“…Whether it is a hypothetical or real-life case, partisans report that transgressions of in-party politicians are less serious, inappropriate, and immoral compared to similar transgressions committed by out-party politicians. This phenomenon includes corruption cases and financial scandals (e.g., Anduiza et al, 2013 ; Wagner et al, 2014 ), sexual scandals (e.g., Costa et al, 2020 ; Fischle, 2000 ), and different moral violations of politicians (Walter & Redlawsk, 2019 ). Furthermore, rival partisans exhibit the same trend in their evaluations of various normative violations of co-partisan and out-partisan laypeople (Claassen & Ensley, 2016 ; see also Yair & Sulitzeanu-Kenan, 2018 ).…”