Gender, Sexism and Contempt in Candidate Evaluation

It has become clear that sexism has a role to play in voter decision-making in the United States, particularly in the context of the 2016 presidential election (Valentino, et al 2018; Cassese and Holman 2018). Many important questions remain, however, about the contexts in which sexism is most likely to matter and what mechanisms explain the relationship between sexism and political behaviour. At the same time, recent evidence points to discrete emotions like fear, anger and enthusiasm as important drivers of various types of political behaviour (e.g. Redlawsk and Pierce 2017). Specifically, recent work has shed light on the salience of contempt, or the feeling that someone is unworthy or inferior, in electoral politics. Contempt is often linked to negative appraisals of competence and integrity and has been shown to be the most important emotion in predicting some electoral contests (Redlawsk, et al 2018; Roseman et al 2020). While much evidence points to the importance of sexism and emotions separately in voter decision-making, little is known about how candidate gender and gender-based prejudices may influence voters’ emotions in general, and levels of contempt, in particular. Because contempt is about feeling others are inferior and unworthy, we suspect that sexism within the electorate will lead female candidates will be more likely to elicit contempt from voters than similar male candidates in a number of circumstances. First, women are subject to gender-based stereotypes related to competence, warmth and morality so we expect that female candidates who violate these stereotypes, such as by showing ambition or aggressive behaviour, will be subject to higher levels of contempt than men displaying the same behaviour. Second, due to high levels of partisan polarisation and animosity (e.g. Mason 2015), we expect that women running in a voter’s out-party will be seen as particularly contemptible, especially to strong partisans. Finally, voters who express high levels of sexism are likely to see women as inferior in general and may therefore feel more contempt toward female candidates than other voters. This increased contempt may also mediate the relationship between sexism and candidate evaluations. Using a Qualtrics sample of US adults, we will conduct an original experiment in which we provide participants with fictitious candidate profiles and systematically vary a number of the candidate’s attributes, including gender, political party, and the extent to which the candidate violates gender stereotypes. A pre-experiment questionnaire will measure participants’ levels of hostile and benevolent sexism (Glick and Fiske 1996) as well as levels of dispositional contempt (Schriber, et al 2017), and a post-treatment survey will gather data on evaluations of the candidate, emotions elicited and whether they would vote for that candidate.