The Impact of Voter Evaluations of Leaders’ Traits on Voting Behaviour: Evidence from Seven European Countries

Costa, Patrício; Silva, Frederico Ferreira da

doi:10.1080/01402382.2015.1004231

Cited by 33 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Thus, despite competence in the seven‐country model also having a relevant impact, overall the warmth dimension has a more robust impact on turnout. This is somewhat in line with previous findings pointing towards a preponderance of the morality/communion dimension vis‐à‐vis competence in the evaluation of politicians (Cislak & Wojciszke ; Costa & Silva ). It appears, then, that when deciding whether to turn out, instead of being mobilised primarily by the performance‐related traits of leaders, empathic relationships towards leaders who are perceived to be warm play a more important role.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…This specific two‐dimensional structure of traits has been successfully applied in studies of leader effects on voting behaviour, proving itself to be a valid framework to account for voters’ evaluations of candidates’ personality traits (Abelson et al. ; Costa & Silva ; Kinder et al. ; Kinder & Sears ; Michel et al.…”

Section: Personality Traits: a Tool For The Evaluation Of Political Lmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When using the SCM, 'actors distinguish individuals and groups according to their likely impact on the self or ingroup as determined by perceived intentions and capabilities' (Cuddy et al 2008: 63) and adjust attitudinal and behavioural responses accordingly. This specific two-dimensional structure of traits has been successfully applied in studies of leader effects on voting behaviour, proving itself to be a valid framework to account for voters' evaluations of candidates' personality traits (Abelson et al 1982;Costa & Silva 2015;Kinder et al 1980;Kinder & Sears 1985;Michel et al 2013;Todorov et al 2005;Wojciszke & Klusek 1996). In low-information contexts, such as those in which they know little about the candidates they are evaluating, voters count on the same basic social perception mechanisms, based on stereotyping, which they use routinely in individual interactions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do we need warm leaders? Exploratory study of the role of voter evaluations of leaders’ traits on turnout in seven European countries

Silva

Costa

2018

European J Political Res

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Previous research on leader effects has focused exclusively on the impact of voters’ evaluations of leaders on vote choice, disregarding possible effects on the prior step of deciding whether or not to turn out to vote. In line with the personalisation of politics thesis, leaders have a higher impact among dealigned voters. Previous studies have demonstrated that leader effects are stronger among voters who voice their dealignment – namely party switchers. However, the potential impact of leaders among those who exited (i.e., who have abstained) is still unstudied. Could leaders have a mobilisation effect and therefore trigger turnout decisions? What characteristics of party leaders are more relevant in this regard? This article is the first comparative study to examine how the evaluation of party leaders’ traits influences voter turnout in general elections. The work incorporates data from election studies across seven countries with different social contexts (Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy and Hungary). Characteristics of leaders were grouped into two dimensions – competence and warmth – in accordance with the stereotype content model and relevant studies on leaders’ traits evaluation. Multiple binary logistic regression models were performed to analyse the predictive power of competence and warmth on turnout, controlling for sociodemographic, political ideology variables and voters’ past political behaviour. Results reinforce the personalisation of politics theory, showing the utmost relevance of warmth personality traits of leaders in voter turnout decisions. Competence personality traits were found to be relevant only in some situations. Interaction effects were also demonstrated between warmth evaluations and identifying with a right‐wing party as well as past political behaviour with both warmth and competence.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Personality Traits: a Tool For The Evaluation Of Political Lmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do we need warm leaders? Exploratory study of the role of voter evaluations of leaders’ traits on turnout in seven European countries

Silva

Costa

2018

European J Political Res

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“…To be sure, the contribution of this article is limited to candidate perceptions. Nonetheless, given the centrality of attitudes and candidate perceptions for ultimate voting choices (Costa & Ferreira da Silva, 2015;Garzia, 2013), the results described in this article are an important new step towards a deeper understanding of the role of individual differences for the electoral effectiveness of negativity in politics.…”

Section: Negative Campaigning Is a Matter Of Tastementioning

confidence: 93%

Is Negative Campaigning a Matter of Taste? Political Attacks, Incivility, and the Moderating Role of Individual Differences

Nai

Maier

2020

American Politics Research

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We test how individual differences moderate the attitudinal effects of attack politics in two online experiments among US respondents, surveyed through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk ( N = 1,408 and N = 1,081). Study 1 tests the moderating effect of personality traits (Big Five, Dark Triad) on the effectiveness of character vs. policy attacks. Study 2 investigates the difference between civil and uncivil attacks and explores the moderating effect of Big Five, Dark Triad, tolerance to negativity and conflict avoidance. Results suggest that the effects of negativity and incivility are not uniform across all respondents. For instance, evaluations of the sponsor are more negative after exposure to negative messages for respondents high in conflict avoidance; respondents high in psychopathy are more likely to have a more negative opinion of the target after being exposed to character attacks, whereas incivility worsen the perception of the target for individuals low in conflict avoidance and agreeableness. Harsher campaigns, in other terms, work particularly well for some – and are particularly rejected by others. The implications of these trends are discussed.

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“…Thirdly, our research shows the potential significance of perceived personality traits in deciding to vote for a given candidate. Previous studies (Caprara et al, 2008;Catellani & Alberici, 2012;Costa & Ferreira da Silva, 2015) already revealed this link, but they focused on a narrow array of politicians' perceived personality traits. Our study, as opposed to previous ones, takes a more complex and multidimensional/multilevel approach to this issue.…”

Section: Summary Of Findingsmentioning

confidence: 92%

Searching for a common methodological ground for the study of politicians' perceived personality traits: A multilevel psycholexical approach

Gorbaniuk

Razmus

Slobodianyk

et al. 2017

Journal of Research in Personality

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lexical studies, a sufficiently extensive basis for an analysis of personality lexicon is considered to be dictionaries with more than 100,000 entries. They contain between 10,000 and 15,000 nouns and adjectives that qualify as personality descriptors. Previous studies (Gorbaniuk, Markiewicz, Bą kowicz, & Ratajewska, 2010) showed that respondents generate an average of 2.36 personality descriptors per one politician. To obtain a pool of personality descriptors comparable to an average lexical study, it was necessary to test 200 respondents (2.36 descriptors per politician Â 31 politicians Â 200 subjects = 14,632 descriptors). * p < 0.05. ** p < 0.001.

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The Impact of Voter Evaluations of Leaders’ Traits on Voting Behaviour: Evidence from Seven European Countries

Cited by 33 publications

References 37 publications

Do we need warm leaders? Exploratory study of the role of voter evaluations of leaders’ traits on turnout in seven European countries

Do we need warm leaders? Exploratory study of the role of voter evaluations of leaders’ traits on turnout in seven European countries

Is Negative Campaigning a Matter of Taste? Political Attacks, Incivility, and the Moderating Role of Individual Differences

Searching for a common methodological ground for the study of politicians' perceived personality traits: A multilevel psycholexical approach

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