Bad for Men, Better for Women: The Impact of Stereotypes during Negative Campaigns

In this paper, we examine whether the impact of negative advertising on citizens' evaluations of candidates depends on the gender of the candidates. Given common gender stereotypes, we expect negative campaigning aimed at women candidates will affect citizens differently than negative campaigni...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Political behavior 2009-03, Vol.31 (1), p.53-77
Main Authors: Fridkin, Kim L., Kenney, Patrick J., Woodall, Gina Serignese
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Advertising
Advertising campaigns
Candidates
Civility
Commercials
Honesty
Men
Negative campaigning
Original Paper
Political advertising
Political behavior
Political Campaigns
Political candidates
Political Science
Political Science and International Relations
Political Science and International Studies
Sex
Sex Stereotypes
Sociology
Stereotypes
Storyboards
Voting
Voting Behavior
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Summary:In this paper, we examine whether the impact of negative advertising on citizens' evaluations of candidates depends on the gender of the candidates. Given common gender stereotypes, we expect negative campaigning aimed at women candidates will affect citizens differently than negative campaigning against male candidates. The results of our study, derived from a survey experiment conducted on a nationwide sample of more than 700 citizens, demonstrate that negative commercials are less effective at depressing evaluations of woman candidates, compared to male candidates. The findings are consistent and strong, across a range of forces that people use to assess competing candidates (i.e., affect and trait evaluations, people's beliefs about issues, anticipated vote choice). The tight control of the experimental design, including randomization of respondents into different conditions that vary in only one way, demonstrates that the gender of the candidate influences people's reactions to different types of negative commercials.
ISSN:0190-9320
1573-6687
DOI:10.1007/s11109-008-9065-x