Gender Differences in Emotional Responses to Partisan Cues

• In Event: Poster Session: Political Psychology

Abstract

Recent research asserts that partisanship, rather than being just an instrumental label that reflects policy preferences, functions as an important social identity (Huddy, Mason, & Aaroe 2015). Social identity theory posits that our group identities are a fundamental part of our self-esteem and sense of belongingness (Tajifel 1979). We theorize that there are important gender differences in emotional responses to partisan cues that are rooted in social identity theory. In particular, we suggest that social identification and the affective nature of partisanship plays a more significant role for women in their partisan identification. The extant literature suggests that there are gender differences in psychological orientations towards politics, and that for women, the group component of partisanship plays a more significant role than it does for men.
We test this theory with a laboratory experiment in which we collect both explicit measures of partisan identity strength (Huddy et al. 2015), as well as emotional responses to partisan cues in the form of physiological data. We collect skin conductance levels, a commonly used measure of physiological arousal, as well as corrugator activity as a measure of negative affect. The benefit of collecting physiological data is that it is an unobtrusive measure that is not subject to social desirability bias in the way that self-reported measures are. We test the hypothesis that women have stronger emotional responses to partisan cues than men. We also build on the literature on negative partisanship and affective polarization by examining gender differences in negative emotions to out-group party cues. Finally, we explore whether the intensity of emotional response is conditional upon the strength of in-party identification. This work sheds light on important gender differences in psychological orientations towards partisan identity.

Authors

• Claire Gothreau, Temple University

• Bert Bakker, University of Amsterdam

• Kevin Arceneaux, Temple University