Norms and Gender Standards

• In Event: Poster Session: Experiments in Political Behavior & Public Administration & Canadian Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Experiments in Political Behavior

Abstract

Democracies continue to struggle with brash, populist political elites who ignore the traditional conventions of polite political discourse. Political stability, however, at least partially rests on shared norms regarding interpersonal, political exchange – it is difficult to “do” the collaborative work of democracy under conditions of prejudicial or hostile exchange. How then do citizens react to norm-violations where politicians baselessly attack their opponents? Despite increased attention to “norm-breaking” in American politics, the dynamics of reactions to norm violations are empirically understudied. In particular, one important quality to such episodes involves the role that gender plays in shaping public punitiveness toward misbehaving elites. While there is ample research that men and women may treated and be punished differently, it is unclear whether the gender of the norm-violator shapes reactions to such misbehavior. In this paper we use two high-profile examples of hostile, violent speech by legislators Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) to experimentally test the extent to which subjects hold male and female legislators to different standards.

Authors

• Drew Cagle, College of Coastal Georgia

• Nicholas Thomas Davis, University of Alabama