Masculine Republicans and Feminine Democrats: Gender and Americans’ Explicit and Implicit Images of the Political Parties

Abstract

During the past three decades Americans have come to view the parties increasingly in gendered terms of masculinity and femininity. Utilizing three decades of American National Election Studies data and the results of a cognitive reaction-time experiment, this paper demonstrates empirically that these connections between party images and gender stereotypes have been forged at the explicit level of the traits that Americans associate with each party, and also at the implicit level of unconscious cognitive connections between gender and party stereotypes. These connections between the parties and masculinity and femininity have important implications for citizens' political cognition and for the study of American political behavior.Over the past 40 years American society has experienced huge and controversial shifts in women's rights and in men's and women's roles. Over this period the two major political parties have presented substantially different gender images to the public: they have polarized on women's rights and abortion, female candidates have become both more common and more likely to be Democrats, a gender gap has Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the

Left wings to the left: Posing and perceived political orientation

“…This corroborates with previous researchers who have found that the direction of pose is related to perceived differences in emotionality (Dunstan & Lindell, 2012;Nicholls, Wolfgang, et al, 2002), and that these differences can effect perceptions of other aspects of the individual, such as how scientific the individual is (ten Cate, 2002) or what their major is in university (Lindell & Savill, 2010). These results also support the body of research that suggests that liberals are stereotyped as being more emotional than conservatives (Farwell & Weiner, 2000;Hayes, 2005;Rule & Ambady, 2010;Winter, 2010), as we found that the more emotional left cheek was associated with greater perceived liberalism. It is possible that participants in this study rated individuals posing with a leftward posing bias as being more liberal due to the association of liberalism with the "left" wing of politics, and those with a rightward posing bias as being more conservative due to the association of conservatism with the "right" wing of politics, suggesting a potential demand characteristic.…”

“…This reflects the tendency of women to be more liberal than men in their voting behaviour and attitudes on political issues (e.g., see Chaney, Alvarez, & Nagler, 1998;Gidengil, Hennigar, Blais, & Nevitte, 2005;Kaufmann, 2002;McCue & Gopoian, 2000;Schlesinger & Heldman, 2001). It is also important to note that traits used to describe liberal individuals: compassionate, devoted to others, emotional, and kind, tend to be associated with femininity, and traits used to describe conservative individuals: active, independent, and decisive, tend to be associated with masculinity (Winter, 2010). This stereotyped association of liberals with traditionally feminine traits and conservatives with traditionally masculine traits could also have influenced participant ratings of individuals.…”

“…Firstly, this previous study examined the way individuals posed, whereas we investigated perceptions of political stance based on pose direction. It is possible that politicians associated with liberalism or conservatism wish to use their political images to counteract the stereotypes of their parties, with conservatives choosing the more emotional left to counteract their stereotype as strong and authoritative yet emotionless leaders, and liberal politicians choosing the left less often to counteract their stereotype as emotional and empathetic yet weak leaders (Winter, 2010). Secondly, the previous study looked at political leaders, as opposed to the partisanship of everyday individuals.…”

“…Individuals additionally perceive liberals to be more helpful, generous, sympathetic and benevolent, and conservatives to be more disagreeable and unsympathetic (Farwell & Weiner, 2000;Robinson et al, 1995). In the United States, participants described the Republican party (which is conservative) as having traits such as active, independent and decisive, whereas the Democratic party (which is liberal) was described as having traits such as compassionate, devoted to others, emotional, and kind (Winter, 2010). Overall, Republicans are perceived as strong leaders, whereas Democrats are perceived as empathetic and compassionate (Hayes, 2005).…”

“…We sought to explore this by presenting images of leftward and rightward posing individuals and asking participants to rate the perceived political orientation of that individual. Due to findings that leftward poses are rated as more emotional (Nicholls, Wolfgang, et al, 2002), and that liberals tend to be associated with greater emotionality (Farwell & Weiner, 2000;Hayes, 2005;Rule & Ambady, 2010;Winter, 2010), we hypothesize that individuals exhibiting a leftward posing bias will be rated as significantly more liberal than individuals posing with a rightward bias.…”