Gender-Based Evaluations Of Integrity Failures Women Leaders Judged Worse

Abstract

Abstract Although research indicates that men and women enjoy similar electoral success, individual-level studies reveal subtle differences in how voters evaluate male and female candidates. Stereotype effects have received a great deal of scholarly attention, with mixed results. However, less studied have been the effects of gender-specific expectations resulting from broadly held social roles, as described by Social Role Theory, and how the moral role expectations of men and women may lead to different evaluative standards and consequences for female candidates (cf. male candidates). Our experiment tested how evaluations of male and female candidates for high-level political office vary as a result of the candidates’ integrity level. In a mixed factorial design, we tested the effects of multiple reports of a candidate’s integrity, to determine how candidate gender and integrity level operate together to affect evaluations of political candidates. As hypothesized, in the absence of actual information concerning a candidate’s character, participants believe female candidates possess greater integrity than their male counterparts. More interestingly, women face a greater evaluative penalty for instances of low integrity, but only when respondents are exposed to multiple reports of a political candidate’s poor integrity. Male candidates are not as severely penalized as female candidates for repeated integrity failings.