Descriptive Representation and Emotionally Coping with Gender Discrimination

• In Event: Gender Discrimination and Engagement

Abstract

Anger has been an important emotional force in politics, and runs deep in the lives of many Americans. But, do women cope differently than men when feeling angry about gender discrimination?  And can a woman representative give women more confidence that they can overcome their political problems and therefore better cope with their anger? Scholars in social psychology have largely focused on two coping strategies that reduce people’s negative feelings – problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping (Folkman and Lazarus 1993). We argue that one’s group position in society affects the likelihood of pursuing problem-focused coping strategies, such as confrontation, or emotion-focused coping strategies, such as distancing. Groups that are marginalized such as women may be less inclined to pursue confrontive strategies on issues related to their marginalization. Instead, they are likely to gain a bigger reduction in anger by engaging in emotion-focused coping strategies (distancing). However, when given a woman representative, a confrontive strategy should prove more effective. To test these arguments, we explore the case of employment gender discrimination using two survey experiments conducted through YouGov with a nationally representative sample of Americans. We will present the findings from these experiments at the conference. 

Authors

• Antoine J. Banks, University of Maryland

• Jennifer L. Merolla, University of California, Riverside

• Heather Hicks, Colorado State University

• William Bishop