Visual Information and Candidate Evaluations: The Influence of Feminine and Masculine Images on Support for Female Candidates

Abstract

Existing research debates the extent to which feminine and masculine stereotypes affect voters’ impressions of female candidates. Current approaches identify how descriptions of female candidates as having feminine or masculine qualities lead voters to rely on stereotypes. We argue that extant scholarship overlooks a critical source of stereotypic information about female candidates—the role of visual information. This manuscript explores the conditions under which voters use feminine and masculine visuals to evaluate female candidates. Drawing on theories of information processing and stereotype reliance, we develop a framework that explains when visual information will affect how voters evaluate female and male candidates. We argue that visual information that is incongruent with stereotypes about a candidate’s sex will affect candidate evaluations while visuals congruent with stereotypes about candidate sex will not. We test these dynamics with an original survey experiment. We find that gender incongruent masculine visuals negatively affect evaluations of a female candidate’s issue competencies and electoral viability.

A Feminine Advantage? Delineating the Effects of Feminine Trait and Feminine Issue Messages on Evaluations of Female Candidates

“…These are not the only strategies female candidates can use that highlight their sex and associated stereotypes about women. For example, female candidates can use images of children and families to evoke feminine stereotypes (Bauer and Carpinella 2018), or female candidates can emphasize maternal identities (Deason, Greenlee, and Langer 2015). More work on identifying the strategies that female candidates use on the campaign trail can lend insight into what it means to “run as a woman” and what effect these strategies have on voter decision-making.…”

“…Differences should occur in the effects of trait-based messages across candidate sex. The congruity between being male and serving in a leadership role is so strong that highlighting qualities inconsistent with masculine conceptions of political leadership should not lead voters to see men as ill qualified for political leadership (Bauer 2018a; Bauer and Carpinella 2018). Issue-based feminine messages should not activate feminine stereotypes for either female or for male candidates because issue-based messages do not activate role congruity considerations.…”

Gender, Candidate Emotional Expression, and Voter Reactions During Televised Debates

“…As we previously noted, voters want leaders who express role congruent emotions (Klofstad et al 2015). But voters also apply varying standards to how women and men in public office look and sound (Bauer 2018, Bauer and Carpinella 2018, Carpinella and Bauer 2019) and may want women and men who express gender role congruent emotions (Fischbach et al 2015). In Germany, Masch and colleagues find voters react positively when leaders express happiness (Gabriel andMasch 2017, Masch 2020).…”

“…Critically, we argue that not all candidates are equally able to use the full range of nonverbal cues because voters apply differing expectations based on the socially-meaningful identities of candidates. Gender is one such identity (Bauer and Carpinella 2018, Bauer 2019, Masch 2020. Applying gender role theory Bos 2019, Oliver andConroy 2020) and research on emotions in nonverbal communications, we argue that men and women running for political office will attempt to strategically employ (Ridout and Searles 2011) specific emotions that are associated with political power (Carpinella and Johnson 2013, Everitt et al 2016.…”

Social Media Research and the Impact of Graphic Design: a case study examining an Indonesian political campaign.

“…Roland Barthes's (1977) theory of the rhetoric of the image is a common framework for the analysis of the meaning of images in campaigns. It is used to discuss imagery in political campaigns in relation to gender (Bauer & Carpinella, 2018), nationalism (White, 2016) and localism (Jacob & Munis, 2018), and the consistency of political messaging in campaigns across image and text (Dumitrescu, 2019;Hayek 2011;Teer-Tomaseli 2005;Visgo, 2013). Serazio (2017) discusses the importance of candidate branding, but without mentioning graphic design.…”