Study: Aggressive Voters Tolerate Uncivil Male Candidates, Not Female Ones

This article by Reece Wallace is published by The Academic Times:

Voters with aggressive personalities don’t mind uncivil behaviors by candidates on the campaign trail, new research found, except when those politicians are women — a finding that emphasizes the price female office-seekers pay for subverting gender stereotypes. 

According to an article published March 1 in Political Psychology, voters of either gender who are high in trait aggression — the tendency to respond to certain situations with physical and verbal actions intended to cause harm — tolerate uncivil male politicians more than their low-aggression peers, but punish women candidates for uncivil behavior as much as the broader population.

That’s because, like many voters, they view aggressive conduct by women as a violation of gender norms and are likely to punish them for it, according to Nichole Bauer, author of the study and an assistant professor at Louisiana State University. The dynamic limits women’s room to maneuver in a political arena shaped by stereotypically masculine norms, she added.

Read the full story here.