How Voters Integrate Information on Candidate Character and Policy Positions

• In Event: Learning and Beliefs

Abstract

According to most democratic ideals, voters should vote for political candidates with whom they believe they share most political opinions. In other words, liberal voters should vote for liberal candidates, and conservative voters for conservative candidates if they are to elect candidates that best represent their interests. However, recent findings suggest that voters do not only vote according to their Political preferences. They also cast their votes based on preferences for certain character traits in candidates (Funk, 1999; Hayes, 2009; Laustsen & Bor, 2017). Importantly, voters’ preferences for candidates’ character traits differ by ideology: Liberals tend to prefer warm, empathetic candidates whereas conservatives value leadership and dominance (Hayes, 2005; Laustsen, 2017). Moreover, liberals and conservatives are found to perceive the social world differently with conservatives generally seeing the world as characterized more by conflict and intergroup competition than liberals (Jost et al, 2003; Duckitt & Sibley, 2010; Hibbing, Smith & Alford, 2014). Consequently liberals’ and conservatives’ candidate trait preferences have been interpreted as evidence that voters are attracted to those candiadte personalities that best match their perception of the social world and, thus, seem most capable of solving the related and pressing political problems. In short, voters might vote for candidates base don two sorts of reasoning. First, a candidate might be the best fit in terms of Ppolitical agreement. Second, a candidate might be the best fit in terms of solving those problems that a given voter (depending on her ideology) sees as most pressing.
Yet, existing research finds that candidates political positions and perceptions of their character is also related. Specifically, voters are found to infer character from candidates’ stated policy positions. Liberal policy positions and statements are shown to evoke impressions of warm, empathetic and compassionate candidates, whereas conservative statement and positions are found to relate to impressions of power, leadership and dominance in the minds of voters (Fiske 2018; Eriksson and Funcke 2015: Winter 2010; Hayes 2005). In other words, for voters information about candidates’ policy positions and impressions of the candidates’ personalities and characters seem to be deeply entangled. This obviously raises the question: Are voters voting for a candidate based on perceptions of policy agreement or because of perceived character impressions?
In this project, we seek to address the above question using an original survey experiment fielded to a national representative sample of 1,600 Danish citizens in the autumn of 2018. Specifically, in the experimental design subjects receive direct information about the policy positions of the candidate (liberal or conservative), the character impressions (warm or dominant), or any combination of the two. Consequently, we are able to investigate a series of important questions related to the puzzle about the causal direction between voters’ perceptions of candidates policy positions and characters. First, we can investigate if voters infer character traits in candidates from information about policy positions in line with prior research. Second, we can address if voters also infer policy positions from information about candidate character. Third, we are able to analyze if information about policy positions and character exert independent effects on global candidate evaluations when both are simultaneously present, or if one type of information attenuates the other.
Results reveal that policy positions and trait impressions are mutually related as revealed in prior work. That is, a conservative candidate is seen as more dominant but as less agreeable than a liberal candidate. Likewise, the reverse is also true. Voters perceive a dominant and non-agreeable candidate as conservative, while a non-dominant and agreeable candidate is stereotyped as liberal. Next, voters’ global candidate evaluations are found to be guided by both policy and character impressions. Importantly, traits affect global candidate evaluations over-and-above what is accounted for by policy positions alone, and when information about traits and policies is inconsistent trait information reduces the effect of policy information (i.e. liberals evaluate a liberal candidate less positively when he is dominant compared to non-domiannt). In short, while impressions of candidates’ policy positions and character traits are clearly linked in the minds of voters both types of impressions guide global candidate evaluations. We conclude by discussing the results in relation to existing theoretical and normative models of candidate evaluation.

Authors

• Lasse Laustsen, Aarhus University

• Michael Bang Petersen, University of Aarhus