Not Quite Woke: Physiological Data Reveals Democrats’ Sexist Leader Evaluations

• In Event: The Biological Dynamics of Political Attitudes and Their Measurement

Abstract

Since 2016, the Democrats have been criticized for and complained about their leadership and prominent candidates – particularly Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. While Al Gore, John Kerry, and even Bill Clinton have either continued in politics or led very public lives as post-presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton has been told to “find a hobby,” and Democrats urged by outlets like Politico to think on “How do you solve a problem like Hillary?” Concurrently, Nancy Pelosi is widely criticized for her political positions, leadership skills, and even age while her Senatorial counterpart Chuck Schumer receives far fewer calls for his replacement. Any criticism of sexism is met with disdain, and we think this is due to Democrats’ perceived social desirability of eschewing sexism, which will not be uncovered by survey data alone. Using electrodermal response and survey data collected from a midwestern adult sample in 2010, we collected self-reported ratings and non-conscious physiological responses to a variety of American politicians, including then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Our findings reveal that individuals respond to prominent male and female politicians differently, and that Democratic men, in particular, issue negative self-reported ratings of both Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. As a follow up, we issued a keypress task to a student sample in 2018 (and plans to administer an adult sample in spring 2019) to examine the amount of effort (number of key presses) individuals are willing to exert to maintain or remove political images, including those of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, and Barack Obama. We find that Democratic individuals were more likely to exert effort to maintain images of Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders than they were for Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. These physiological and behavioral results demonstrate that favorability rating disparities by gender may be deep-seated.

Authors

• Amanda Friesen, IUPUI

• Clarisse Warren, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Claire Gothreau, Temple University