What Works? Emotion and Legislators’ Communication Strategies Across Gender

• In Event: Emotions and Identity Politics

Abstract

Elected officials face the same public policy exigencies no matter their gender. But how officials communicate their positions is oftentimes impacted by gendered perceptions from their audiences. While recent research finds that women may no longer face a penalty for using dominant language (e.g. counter-stereotypical) in the context of legislative negotiation, there are reasons to believe this finding is context specific. Much work in political science has examined the impact of gender cues on perceptions, yet we know little about how individuals evaluate actions of men and women when they are acting stereotypically or counter to stereotypes on issue areas that also cue individuals to think in gendered terms. In other words, the gendered nature of specific issue domains may serve to activate automatic stereotypes, which may lead citizens to expect specific types of emotional appeals. We hypothesize that what matters in the evaluation of women with respect to emotional expression is the congruency with audience expectations. For example, displaying dominance on a negotiation over education policy may be perceived differently than dominance on war preparedness policy. Using a survey experiment on a diverse national sample, we vary the communication appeals from legislators across three dimensions: the policy domain, tone of preference justification, and legislator gender. Thus, we examine important nuances in how male and female politicians navigate strategic political communication opportunities, gaining leverage on when each gender pays a penalty or gains reward for specific emotional appeals.

Authors

• Lindsey Cormack, Stevens Institute of Technology

• Kristyn L. Karl, Stevens Institute of Technology