Aww, Shucky Ducky: Voter Response to Accusations of Herman Cain’s “Inappropriate Behavior”

Peterson, David A.; Vonnahme, Beth Miller

doi:10.1017/s1049096514000237

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…The relevance and importance of the transgression also influences voters' responses (Anduiza et al, 2013;Lee, 2015). These perceptions are also affected by how their news sources and the media in general frame the scandal (Peterson & Vonnahme, 2014;Shah, Watts, Domke, & Fan, 2002).…”

Section: Heterogeneous Responses To Politicians' Moral Transgressionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Voters’ Partisan Responses to Politicians’ Immoral Behavior

Walter

Redlawsk

2019

Political Psychology

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Politicians’ moral behaviors affect how voters evaluate them. But existing empirical research on the effects of politicians’ violations of moral standards pays little attention to the heterogeneous moral foundations of voters in assessing responses to violations. It also pays little attention to the ways partisan preferences shape responses. We examine voters’ heterogeneous evaluative and emotional responses to presumably immoral behaviors by politicians. We make use of moral foundation theory’s argument that people vary in the extent to which they endorse, value, and use the five universally available moral intuitions: care, fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity. We report on a 5 × 3 between‐subjects experiment asking a random sample of 2,026 U.S. respondents to respond to politicians’ violations of different moral foundations. We randomly vary which of the five foundations is violated and the partisanship of the actor (Republic/Democrat/Nonpartisan). Results suggest that partisanship rather than moral foundations drives most of U.S. voters’ responses to moral foundations violations by politicians. These foundations seem malleable when partisan actors are involved. While Democrats in this sample show stronger negative emotional response to moral violations than Republicans, partisans of both parties express significantly greater negativity when a politician of the other party violates a moral foundation.

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Section: Heterogeneous Responses To Politicians' Moral Transgressionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Voters’ Partisan Responses to Politicians’ Immoral Behavior

Walter

Redlawsk

2019

Political Psychology

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“…This loss was, however, primarily based along existing lines of support: Supporters of Clinton who were in denial of the truth of the allegation were less likely to think Clinton should step down as a result (Fischle, 2000). Herman Cain, a candidate for the Grand Old Party (GOP) presidential nomination in 2012 experienced a similar loss of support after multiple women stepped forward to allege that he had made inappropriate sexual advances to them (Peterson & Vonnahme, 2014). In this case, individuals' postscandal reactions to Cain were significantly influenced by the ideological leanings of their news source.…”

Section: Scandal Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Talking the Talk but Not Walking the Walk

McDermott

Schwartz

Vallejo

2015

American Politics Research

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Aggregate, survey, and experimental research into political scandal teaches us how the public reacts to revelations of misdeeds on behalf of its elected representatives. One common scenario, however, has been largely overlooked in scandal studies: the effects of hypocrisy in scandal. Examples abound of politicians who campaign on values that they then directly betray with their actions in office. Conventional wisdom, however, holds that such hypocrisy is an unpardonable transgression. We examine whether and how hypocrisy affects public reactions to political scandal and its perpetrators. Using a Quinnipiac University survey experiment, we demonstrate that negative judgments of a hypothetical politician caught in an adulterous relationship not only vary by degree depending on the presence or absence of hypocrisy but that they also vary by type of judgment. Individuals generally react more negatively to politicians in hypocritical scandal situations than nonhypocritical ones. In addition, a hypocritical situation affects public judgments of a politician’s competence in office, above and beyond other judgments, demonstrating an added professional aspect to judgments of scandals when they involve hypocrisy.

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“…We also focus on the opposing candidate bringing up the politician's missteps. It is possible that we would obtain diff erent eff ects if a (neutral) media source, rather than a political opponent, provided information about the scandal (e.g., Bersinky et al 2011;Miller 2010; the source of the news-cable or network-may also matter, see Peterson and Miller Vonnahme 2014).…”

Section: Our Fi Ndings Suggest That Unlike a Moral Scandal A Fi Nancmentioning

confidence: 99%