Party Stereotypes Research Articles

How Moral Motives Link Party Stereotypes

Citizens hold robust stereotypes about the parties and their leaders, including the issues they are most competent at handling and the character traits they exemplify. Yet, we know less about whether and how party stereotypes are linked in the minds of voters. I argue that there are strong links between issues and traits, and that these links are not merely the byproduct of elite ideology. Rather, issue ownership is structured, in part, by the moral problems those issues represent (e.g., suffering) and the character traits (e.g., compassion) that are relevant to solving those problems. As a result, there should be strong and widespread links between the issues and character traits that parties own. Alternatively, any issue-trait linkages might be wholly a product of elite behavior, in which case these links should be limited to the politically engaged. I find support for my hypotheses across three studies that include a national sample, within-subjects analyses, and open-ended responses. Issue-trait linkages are not reducible to ideology and persist even among the least politically informed. These findings help explain the structure of issue ownership, why issue ownership is so stable over time, and how politicians might successfully trespass on their opponent’s owned issues.

Typecast: A Routine Mental Shortcut Causes Party Stereotyping

Party stereotyping inflames polarization. What fuels party stereotyping? We explore the extent to which a common mental shortcut — the representativeness heuristic — yields biased mental images of the parties. First, we show that people commit the conjunction fallacy — a logical error associated with representativeness bias — at higher rates when evaluating others with party-representative characteristics. Second, when we inform people how groups compose parties, the least numerate use this information to infer party composition, consistent with the representativeness heuristic. Finally, we show that people’s party stereotypes become more biased when we increase cognitive load, though stereotyping occurs even in relatively “easy” contexts. The representativeness heuristic appears to exacerbate party stereotyping, and the way that media informs people about the relationship between social groups and parties may encourage reliance on representativeness. More broadly, reducing stereotyping requires reckoning with our built-in machinery for simplifying the world around us.

The Group Theory of Parties: Identity Politics, Party Stereotypes, and Polarization in the 21st Century

AbstractAn emerging narrative contends that 2016 was significant for bridging identity politics and American party conflict. This narrative misses a fundamental truth: for ordinary Americans, partisan identity has always been grounded in their orientations toward groups in society. Thegroup theory of partiesholds that citizens evaluate political parties according to their social stereotypes of Democrats and Republicans, ultimately identifying (or not) with a party that jives with their own self-image. In this essay, I review existing research and summarize several original studies suggesting that citizens’ beliefs about party composition affect their feelings toward Democrats and Republicans. Americans tend to hold shockingly erroneous beliefs about the degree to which stereotypical groups compose the parties – for example, that 38% of Republicans belong to the economic “1%” – and correcting social stereotypes about the out-party reduces polarization between rank-and-file party supporters. Most studies discussed in this essay were conducted before Donald Trump became a candidate, suggesting that 2016 was not the year that identity politics hijacked the parties, but rather the year in which the implicit group basis for mass partisanship became baldly explicit.

Terrorist Threat, Male Stereotypes, and Candidate Evaluations

How does the threat of terrorism affect evaluations of female (vs. male) political leaders, and do these effects vary by the politician’s partisanship? Using two national surveys, we document a propensity for the U.S. public to prefer male Republican leadership the most in times of security threat, and female Democratic leadership the least. We theorize a causal process by which terrorist threat influences the effect of stereotypes on candidate evaluations conditional on politician partisanship. We test this framework with an original experiment:a nationally representative sample was presented with a mock election that varied the threat context and the gender and partisanship of the candidates. We find that masculine stereotypes have a negative influence on both male and female Democratic candidates in good times (thus reaffirming the primacy of party stereotypes), but only on the female Democratic candidate when terror threat is primed. Republican candidates—both male and female—are unaffected by masculine stereotypes, regardless of the threat environment.

When Gender and Party Collide: Stereotyping in Candidate Trait Attribution

Research has shown that voters are willing to stereotype candidates on the basis of their gender, which can sometimes pose obstacles and sometimes prove advantageous for female politicians. But the literature is uncertain about how candidate gender interacts with candidate party affiliation to shape voters' perceptions. In this article, I draw on political psychology, the women and politics literature, and recent work on partisan “trait ownership” to suggest that the application of gender stereotypes will be limited by the salience of partisan stereotypes. I use nationally representative survey data and a content analysis of news coverage from the 2006 U.S. Senate elections to test the argument. Focusing on voter evaluations of candidate traits, I find that party stereotypes are more powerful than gender stereotypes, and that assessments of candidate attributes can be affected by news coverage when candidates are portrayed in ways that challenge traditional partisan images. The results suggest that gender stereotyping is limited by the relevance of party stereotypes, and that as the Republican and Democratic parties continue to polarize at the elite level, the importance of partisan stereotyping is likely to increase.

Masculine Republicans and Feminine Democrats: Gender and Americans’ Explicit and Implicit Images of the Political Parties

During the past three decades Americans have come to view the parties increasingly in gendered terms of masculinity and femininity. Utilizing three decades of American National Election Studies data and the results of a cognitive reaction-time experiment, this paper demonstrates empirically that these connections between party images and gender stereotypes have been forged at the explicit level of the traits that Americans associate with each party, and also at the implicit level of unconscious cognitive connections between gender and party stereotypes. These connections between the parties and masculinity and femininity have important implications for citizens’ political cognition and for the study of American political behavior.

Trait Voting in U.S. Senate Elections

Assessments of candidates’ personal attributes are known to affect vote choice in presidential elections, but little work has explored trait perceptions and trait voting in congressional contests. In this article, I examine the role of candidate traits in U.S. Senate campaigns, drawing on unique survey data from the 2006 midterms. I find that voters’ evaluations of candidate qualities are less influenced by party stereotypes than in presidential elections and are strongly related to whether a candidate is an incumbent. And just as in campaigns for the White House, trait perceptions affect vote choice. But sitting Senators hold trait advantages that incumbent presidents do not necessarily receive, which makes leadership a particularly influential attribute in Senate races. In addition, trait voting is not contingent on campaign intensity and is strongest among the least politically aware citizens. In general, the results provide evidence for the applicability of presidential trait theories to congressional elections but show that incumbency and political awareness condition their effects in Senate contests.

Do Gender Stereotypes Transcend Party?

Voters hold stereotypes about candidate gender and candidate party. Yet little is known about the intersection of gender and party stereotypes. In this article, we investigate whether gender stereotypes transcend party. We consider whether gender stereotypes affect woman politicians differently by party and examine the effect of partisan identification on gender stereotypes. We find that the public perceives gender differences within both political parties. Thus the presence of the party cue does not preclude a role for candidate gender. However, we also find that the implications of gender stereotypes are somewhat different for Democratic and Republican women.

State Income, Employment, Infrastructure and Well-Being: Do Party Control and Political Competition Matter?

This paper examines the relationship between state party politics and the economic performance of the state over six four-year periods covering the years 1978 to 2002. Novel features include that the study: examines the role of party control in a panel; it examines the effects of political competitiveness; measures effects not only on income variables but also on employment, tax, and spending policies, infrastructure investment, and quality of life variables. The main finding is that control of the executive branch, the legislative branch, or both branches, has no significant effect on state outcomes, but the degree of political competitiveness in these data reveals significant and usually beneficial effects on employment and on quality of life outcomes. The paper also investigates possible factors that could otherwise mistakenly account for the negative conclusion on party control. We hypothesize that both parties, when in competition for votes, will adopt those economic policies believed to be effective by the politically median voter, regardless of party stereotypes, but that the competition between the parties may provide benefits to the public.

An Exploration of the Stability of Partisan Stereotypes in the United States

In this paper I argue that party stereotypes are a manifestation of partisanship that can inform the current debate about the stability of partisan identity in the United States. I provide a theory for understanding the stability of partisanship using the self-categorization theory developed by John Turner and his colleagues. This provides firmer theoretical ground for the prevalent view that partisanship instability should follow partisan dealignment and realignments. Its most important contribution, however, is its prediction that partisanship instability can be traced to the character of the categories that the electoral environment makes available for stereotyping the parties. When the electoral environment makes available a set of partisan categories that are more heterogeneous in content, as is the case in the USA since the 1970s, greater partisanship instability is a natural result. I explore this hypothesis using the party likes/dislikes questions in American National Election Study (ANES) panel surveys. I find that the self-categorization theory of partisanship offers a good explanation for an evident decline in the stability of party stereotypes starting in the 1970s and a curious rise in US partisanship stability between 1992 and 1994.

Activation and application of political party stereotypes: The role of television

Despite tremendous changes in the American political system, the two major political parties continue to play an important role in mass political behavior. In this article we investigate how the medium of information presentation affects the likelihood that party images are activated and subsequently applied to process political candidate information. Conceptualizing party images as stereotypes, we use a two‐stage experimental design to test several hypotheses about stereotype processing under different information conditions. We find that television enhances the activation of party stereotypes for the more sophisticated, but inhibits activation for the less sophisticated. Once activated, however, partisan stereotypes are used in an information‐economizing way by both sophisticated and less sophisticated individuals to evaluate political candidates. However, television interferes with the ability of the less sophisticated to use policy information.

PUTTING IT IN WRITING: AN EXAMINATION OF PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE PLATFORMS IN THE 1992ELECTION

The 1992 presidential election saw several different campaign innovations that brought candidates closer to citizens. One such innovation was the production of campaign books by the candidates. These candidate platforms signal the continuing dominance of candidates and the decline of parties as the grounding elements of presidential campaigns. Many analysts argue that such independent campaigning is detrimental to democracy. We disagree. Candidate platforms indicate positive development in presidential politics. More detailed than party platforms, they provide information to voters in a way that conforms to the realities of modern campaigning. In addition, they help candidates challenge existing voter impressions based upon party stereotypes. Finally, candidate platforms provide for direct accountability, allowing citizens to blame or credit presidents for their actions. This may make the job of president more dificult, but it also makes what candidates say in campaigns more meaningful.

The Role of Partisan Stereotypes in Information Processing about Political Candidates

Research in social cognition suggests that individuals employ a variety of cognitive strategies when processing information. Some of these strategies may function as cognitive heuristics, or simplifying rules of thumb, under certain information-processing conditions. In this article, I suggest that political party stereotypes can function heuristically for voters when they are confronted with political information-processing tasks. Two different cognitive strategies are outlined, a theory-driven and data-driven mode, and hypotheses about the use of these two strategies in political candidate evaluation, inference, and perception are developed. These are tested with an experimental design that uses videotapes of political candidates as stimulus material. I find that partisan stereotypes have considerable influence in political information processing, suggesting that the political parties continue to play an important role in voters' decision-making processes.