Not Just Sticks and Stones: Psychological Abuse and Physical Violence among U.S. State Senators

Abstract

In this study, we report results of a survey of U.S. state senators about their experiences of psychological abuse, physical violence, and sexualized abuse and violence on the job, as well as gender differences among senators. Overall, our results indicate that more than 80% of state senators reported having faced abuse and violence, and women senators reported more physical violence than men. Moreover, we found differences in the factors that contributed to abuse and violence among women and men state senators. Most notably, women with higher levels of power (party or committee leaders) were more likely than other women to experience psychological abuse and sexualized abuse and violence, and Democratic women senators faced more sexualized abuse and violence than Republican women. The implications for continued service by state senators in the face of these experiences, the likelihood of attracting future candidates, and the implications for gender diversity in office are explored.

Violence among State House Candidates during the COVID‐19 Pandemic

“…Psychological violence was common among our respondents: 84.9% of candidates reported at least one episode. As in prior research (Herrick et al 2021, Herrick and Thomas 2021; Thomas et al 2019), the primary conduits of violence were social media. Social media abuse averaged 2.86 on the 5‐point scale, and harassment averaged 2.47.…”

“…Psychological violence was common among our respondents: 84.9% of candidates reported at least one episode. as in prior research thomas 2021;thomas et al 2019), the primary conduits of violence were social media. social media abuse averaged 2.86 on the 5-point scale, and harassment averaged 2.47. in addition, two-thirds of respondents reported harassment and three-quarters reported social media violence.…”

“…Fourth, there are other ways of measuring the central concept of our work — psychological violence against political candidates. For comparability across existing measures of this concept among political elites (Herrick and Thomas 2021; Inter‐Parliamentary Union 2016; Thomas et al‐ 2019), we chose the measures reported here. Future researchers may want to expand the measures and supplement them with qualitative analysis.…”

“…Following research examining violence against US mayors and state senators (Herrick and Thomas 2021; Thomas et al 2019), we include control variables to account for how violence is related to individual traits (age, sex, race, and party), 13. district traits (population, density, socioeconomic status, and age), 14.…”

“…However, as our work focuses on individually initiated psychological violence against US candidates rather than state‐sponsored organizationally directed violence, the second foundation of our research comes from studies of US officeholders. The emerging literature on US electoral violence aimed at officeholders prior to COVID‐19 finds that more than 80% of both US mayors and US state senators have faced psychological violence inflicted by constituents (Herrick et al 2021; Herrick and Thomas 2021; Thomas et al 2019). Further, Herrick, Thomas, and Bartholomy (2021) report that political polarization is associated with increased violence against legislators by their colleagues.…”