The effect of sexist attitudes and identity of the speaker on the credibility of politically contested statements

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the credibility of a politically contested statement on gender (in)equality depends on the identity of the speaker. Recent studies have found that a) some sociodemographic profiles (specifically white men) tend to perceive the messages of feminist women as more biased than those of feminist men (Roden, 2022); b) that the same message is more credible if it is said by a scientist than if it is said by a political person (Besalú et al 2021); c) and that the credibility of male scientists is higher than that of female scientists (Knobloch-Westerwick, Glynn and Huge, 2013). Still, it is unclear how previous sexist attitudes interact with the identity of the speaker on gender inequality. Assuming that holding sexist attitudes decrease the perceived credibility of a statement on current gender inequality in Spain, we test whether this relationship is moderated by the gender of the speaker, b) the expertise of the speaker (scientist or activist). We expect that H1) individuals with stronger sexist attitudes would perceive a statement on current gender inequality in Spain as less credible. We also expect that the identity of the speaker matters specially for those holding stronger sexist attitudes. More specifically, H2) individuals holding stronger sexist attitudes will find a statement on gender inequality more credible if the speaker is a man (vs woman); H3) if the speaker is a scientist (v. an activist). We test our predictions with an innovative survey experiment with data gathered in Spain in February 2023 (N=3000), asking for sexist attitudes and for the credibility of a statement that varied the a) gender of the speaker and b) expertise of the speaker, while controlling for socio-demographics, political ideology and populist attitudes