Women’s persistent underrepresentation in the political sphere has been tackled by political scientists and psychologists alike. The two approaches, however, have rarely been merged to create a coherent image of the problem across multiple levels of analysis. The present study connects the existing political structures (types and levels of office available for candidates) and electoral systems across a sample of European countries, with individual-level heuristics affecting voters' political decisions. It is the first empirical attempt to pinpoint specific contexts in which displaying counterstereotypical appearance cues might be beneficial or detrimental to women’s electoral success. Critically, the effects are also investigated in the context of choice from a set of alternatives, making the results of the study more applicable to real-life electoral settings. To this end, a 4 (appearance cue) x 2 (office) x 2 (choice) online experiment is administered across a sample of participants from 8 different European countries. Manipulating the physical appearance of confederates posing as politicians, rather than utilizing images of real politicians, allows for a direct measurement of the impact of the subtle cues of masculinity on the decision-making process. It also constitutes the first attempt to date to try to disentangle the mechanisms of impression formation and impression management (McGraw, 2003). The manipulation also allows for the creation of more gender-balanced experimental materials, thus increasing the external validity of the obtained data.
Previous studies in organizational psychology indicate that the assessments of women’s leadership capabilities are influenced by subtle cues of masculinity in their appearance (Kühnen, Sczesny, von Rennenkampff, & Stahlberg, 2004). Seeing as politicians routinely spend large sums of money on image and PR consulting, using such cues to effectively counteract at least a portion of the stereotypes that may hinder their advancement through political ranks is a viable avenue that should be explored further. Certain studies also point to the importance of female politicians attempting to cross the trait arenas typically associated with male candidates in order to gain advantage in electoral races (e.g. Carpinella & Johnson, 2012), while others caution that striking a balance between traditional femininity and competence might be the answer (Hehman et al., 2014).
In sum, the project combines different strands of psychological and political science research into a newly unified body of knowledge. Initial results of the experiment will be presented and discussed, including its implications for political impression formation, image creation and maintenance, and political representation.
