Saving Face: Identifying Voter Responses to Black Candidates and Female Candidates

Krupnikov, Yanna; Piston, Spencer; Bauer, Nichole M.

doi:10.1111/pops.12261

Cited by 85 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…Individuals may suppress stereotypic and prejudiced responses (Devine 1989;Devine et al 2002;Krupnikov, Piston, and Bauer 2016). Citizens who actually believe one sex is superior may avoid saying so due to social desirability bias (Presser and Traugott 1992).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Refusing to know a woman’s place: the causes and consequences of rejecting stereotypes of women politicians in the Americas

Smith

Warming

Hennings

2016

Politics, Groups, and Identities

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What are the sources and effects of gendered leadership stereotypes for women's representation? We explore the role of stereotypes in shaping public attitudes toward women's representation using AmericasBarometer survey data from 25 countries. We report three key results. First, the modal respondent in almost every country rejects gendered leadership stereotypes, affirming that women and men leaders are equally qualified on corruption and the economy. This holds even after we attempt to account for social desirability bias. Second, there are significant individual-and country-level determinants of stereotyping. In countries with higher women's representation and labor force participation but without gender quotas, citizens are more likely to choose pro-female and neutral responses over pro-male stereotypes. At the individual level, those rejecting stereotypes are less authoritarian, more supportive of labor market equality, and more leftist than those reporting pro-female stereotypes. Third, the consequences for representation vary by partisanship and country context. Pro-female leadership stereotypes boost support for women presidential candidates and for legislative gender quotas, but they matter less among copartisans of women candidates, and they matter more when women candidates are viable but gendered outsiders. Those rejecting leadership stereotypes altogether are less supportive of quotas. ARTICLE HISTORYWhat are the nature and consequences of gendered leadership stereotypes in developing democracies? We address this question in the case of the Americas, where the number of women elected to presidential office has risen dramatically in the past decade, yet women remain substantially underrepresented at all levels. Growing bodies of work examine the institutional causes and policy consequences of women's representation in Latin America; at the mass level, scholars examine public opinion toward women leaders in the abstract, and how candidate gender affects vote choice. Yet, the connection from mass attitudes such as stereotypes to women's representation in the region has yet to be addressed.Scholars of the US show that gendered leadership stereotypes remain prevalent but are declining, and in recent elections only indirectly affect vote choice; some suggest they do not matter at all (Bauer 2015a, 2015b; Brooks 2013; Ditonto, Hamilton, and Redlawsk 2014; Dolan 2014; Dolan and Lynch 2015). We analyze 2012 public opinion data to understand citizens' stereotypes of the political capabilities of men and women politicians. We make two advances over prior work. First, we examine the extent to which developing democracies exhibit similar gendered leadership stereotypes as in the US. There are reasons to expect differences. For instance, the Americas contain a great range in levels of development, and development is associated feminist attitudes more generally (e.g., Banaszak and Plutzer 1993;Inglehart and Norris 2003;Morgan and Buice 2013;Paxton and Hughes 2007). Second, we distinguish theoretically and empiricall...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Refusing to know a woman’s place: the causes and consequences of rejecting stereotypes of women politicians in the Americas

Smith

Warming

Hennings

2016

Politics, Groups, and Identities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Second, the conjoint analysis also enables us to minimize the effect of social desirability bias. It is difficult to assess public acceptance of a female candidate by asking people directly due to the potential for social desirability effects in surveys (Burden, Ono, and Yamada 2017; Krupnikov et al 2016;Streb et al 2008). Respondents opposed to seeing a woman in the parliament are likely to bow to prevailing social norms and falsely report that they are willing to endorse a female candidate.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do voters prefer gender stereotypic candidates? evidence from a conjoint survey experiment in Japan

Ono

Yamada

2018

PSRM

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The striking under-representation of women in Japan has been partly attributed to gender stereotypes and prejudice toward female leadership among voters. We examine whether and to what extent candidates get rewarded or punished when they deviate from the behavioral expectations associated with their gender roles and images. Our conjoint experiment results in Japan demonstrate that not only are female candidates disadvantaged compared to their male counterparts, but also that they could lose support when they diverge from gender-based behavioral expectations. Our findings suggest that female candidates face a difficult dilemma in that they must weigh the cost of losing support for failing to conform to gender-based expectations, against the general loss of support they would incur for conforming to these expectations.

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“…Indeed, scholars have uncovered a number of key instances in which non-black voters have reacted negatively to black candidates Krupnikov, Piston, and Bauer 2016;Lupia et al 2015;Reeves 1997;Weaver 2012) Tesler and Sears 2010). Moreover, research suggests that black candidates are disproportionately punished for questionable behavior such as becoming involved in scandals (Berinsky et al 2011).…”

Section: Ambiguity and Candidate Racementioning

confidence: 99%

Clear as Black and White: The Effects of Ambiguous Rhetoric Depend on Candidate Race

Piston

Krupnikov

Ryan

et al. 2018

The Journal of Politics

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Campaign advisors and political scientists have long acknowledged the benefits of ambiguous position-taking. We argue, however, that these benefits do not extend to black candidates facing non-black voters. When a white candidate makes vague statements, many of these voters project their own policy positions onto the candidate, increasing support for the candidate. But they are less likely to extend black candidates the same courtesy. We test these claims with an original two-wave survey experiment varying the race of male candidates on a national sample of non-black voters. We find that ambiguity boosts support for white male candidates but not for black male candidates. In fact, black male candidates who make ambiguous statements are actually punished for doing so by racially prejudiced voters. These results clarify limits on the utility of the electoral strategy of ambiguity and identify a key condition under which prejudice shapes voter behavior.

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Saving Face: Identifying Voter Responses to Black Candidates and Female Candidates

Cited by 85 publications

References 84 publications

Refusing to know a woman’s place: the causes and consequences of rejecting stereotypes of women politicians in the Americas

Refusing to know a woman’s place: the causes and consequences of rejecting stereotypes of women politicians in the Americas

Do voters prefer gender stereotypic candidates? evidence from a conjoint survey experiment in Japan

Clear as Black and White: The Effects of Ambiguous Rhetoric Depend on Candidate Race

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