Intersectionalities, Affinities, and Stereotypes of Candidate Trustworthiness in Canada: Analyzing a Conjoint Survey Experiment

Are perceptions of candidate trustworthiness impacted by intersectional identities, specifically, between gender and ethnicity? Research suggests that the two facets can independently impact trustworthiness perceptions and, in some cases, can produce joint effects larger than the combined independent effects. Women candidates are often stereotyped as being more ethical and trustworthy than men candidates (Barnes and Beaulieu 2014; Schneider and Bos 2014); candidate race effects are heterogenous but generally show impact, conditional on group and biases such as ‘colorism’ (Chirco and Buchanan 2022; Lemi and Brown 2019; Visalvanich 2017). But some combinations of gender and ethnicity, for example, Black women in the United States, have been argued to have an additional impact on candidate perceptions (Carew 2016; Mosier and Pietri 2021). These impacts may produce “strategic advantage” or “double disadvantage” (Gershon and Monforti 2019). Others have noted that these effects depend not only on candidate identities but on respondent identities (Carew 2016; Cargile 2021). Our paper examines intersectionalities at both candidate and individual respondent levels in Canada, using a conjoint survey experiment where candidate gender and ethnicity, among other characteristics, were randomized. We solicited perceptions on several candidate traits, focusing on trustworthiness here. We investigate two questions. First, to what extent do perceptions of trustworthiness vary by candidate and respondent gender, ethnicity, and the interaction of the two dimensions? Specifically, we examine the role of affinity – respondents favouring candidates with shared intersectional identities – and bias – respondents disfavouring candidates with contrasting or opposed intersectional identities (e.g., White men respondents and Black women candidates). Second, to what extent do partisan stereotypes mediate the impacts of intersectional affinities on trustworthiness? For example, in the Canadian context, to what extent does a Liberal Chinese woman view Liberal Chinese women candidates differently from Conservative Chinese women candidates? This paper contributes to our understanding of relationships between candidate and individual intersectional identities in an understudied context, Canada, which is highly diverse but still politically underinclusive of both gender and ethnic minorities.