When racism and sexism benefit Black and female politicians: Politicians’ ideology moderates prejudice’s effect more than politicians’ demographic background.

Bai, Hui

doi:10.1037/pspi0000314

Cited by 10 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…As such, these studies clarify that the growing salience of White identity politics under the epochal demographic shift, though unlikely to benefit White politicians who are racial in-group individually, may ultimately benefit White citizens collectively. Finally, recent data (Bai, 2020;Chamber et al, 2013) observed that racial attitudes about racial out-groups have a primarily "ideological" effect. Current studies contribute to and complement this line of work by demonstrating that racial identification, a racial attitude that has a focus on one's self and in-group, has an "ideological" effect as well.…”

Section: Theoretical Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Politicians’ Ideology Matters More than Their Race in Determining the Association between White Identity and Evaluation of the Politicians

Bai¹

2020

Preprint

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Despite historically being omitted as a socially invisible identity, recent studies suggest that racial identity can play an important role in predicting White Americans’ sociopolitical attitudes and behaviors, demonstrating an emergent trend of White identity politics in the United States. However, whether the effects of White identity politics are more “ideological” or “racial” remains an unclarified question. Four studies using White American samples show that the evidence consistently supports the “ideological” explanation of White identity, the idea that White identity predicts support for conservative politicians and opposition for liberal politicians for their ideology. The evidence is limited for the “racial” explanation, the idea that White identity predicts support for White politicians but opposition for Black politicians for their race. Thus, this paper clarifies the theories about White identity politics as well as implications for whom might benefit from the rise of White identity politics.

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Section: Theoretical Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Politicians’ Ideology Matters More than Their Race in Determining the Association between White Identity and Evaluation of the Politicians

Bai¹

2020

Preprint

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“…When explaining the association between explicit prejudice and explicit evaluation of politicians, most recent studies provide more evidence for the ideology theory of prejudice over the demographic theory (Bai, 2020). Nonetheless, exactly what aspect of political ideology is responsible for the pattern remains to be clarified.…”

Section: Prejudice and Conservatism: Inequality Or Status Quo?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In short, past studies suggest that racism and sexism benefit conservative candidates and undermine liberal candidates in the current political landscape because racism and sexism reflect underlying motivations that predispose one to conservatism as in the preservation of extant unequal power and status quo between different social groups (Bai, 2020;Gutierrez & Unzueta, 2021). By testing the inequality hypothesis and the status quo hypothesis, the current paper extends this line of work by PREJUDICE AND POLITICIANS further unpacking different psychological motives that contribute to the effect of racism and sexism.…”

Section: The Status Quo Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For this reason, in panel B, the two boxes representing moderating effects are about the theoretical moderating effects of politicians' policies' inequality implications and status quo implications, omitting the representation of politicians' race and gender. As such, to clarify the current paper's contribution to the literature, while past studies have investigated and compared Paths 1 and 5 (Bai, 2020) The final sample sizes in all studies were determined before data collection in pre-registrations and they were mainly determined by funding availability. No additional data collection was continued after initial data analysis in any study.…”

Section: Current Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Though Knowles and colleagues (2010) found that implicit racism predicts opposition to a health reform plan when it was attributed to Barack Obama but not when it was attributed to Bill Clinton, suggesting a demographic explanation, it is also possible that Bill Clinton was perceived to be less liberal than Barack Obama. As a result, it may have been more salient to respondents that the health reform plan reflects liberal ideology when it was attributed to Barack Obama, belying an ideological mechanism (Bai, 2020).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Implicit and Explicit Prejudice Are Related to Explicit Support for Politicians Who are Conservative, but not White or Male, Mostly Because They Promote Inequality

Bai¹

2021

Preprint

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Recent studies show that explicit prejudice is related to explicit support for conservative and opposition for liberal politicians, regardless of their demographics such as race and gender. However, it remains unclear how prejudice is associated with evaluation of candidates on the implicit domain. Furthermore, prior theories assume that these associations exist because of the politicians’ preferences for inequality and status quo, but these assumptions have never been empirically tested. Four pre-registered experiments clarify that politicians’ ideology, not race or gender, determines the association between prejudice and explicit evaluation of politicians, regardless of whether prejudice is measured explicitly or implicitly. These preferences are primarily driven by citizens’ preferences for politicians who support inequality, and to a lesser extent, preferences for those who support the status quo. Together, these findings clarify the political consequences of racism and sexism and further our understanding of the psychological function of prejudice.

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Pragmatic bias impedes women’s access to political leadership

Corbett

Voelkel

Cooper

et al. 2022

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Progress toward gender equality is thwarted by the underrepresentation of women in political leadership, even as most Americans report they would vote for women candidates. Here, we hypothesize that women candidates are often disadvantaged by pragmatic bias, a tendency to withhold support for members of groups for whom success is perceived to be difficult or impossible to achieve. Across six studies (N = 7,895), we test whether pragmatic bias impedes women’s access to a highly significant political leadership position—the US presidency. In two surveys, 2020 Democratic primary voters perceived women candidates to be less electable, and these beliefs were correlated with lower intentions to vote for women candidates (Studies 1 and 2). Voters identified many reasons women would be less electable than men, including others’ unwillingness to vote for women, biased media coverage, and higher requirements to prove themselves. We next tested interventions to reduce pragmatic bias. Merely correcting misperceptions of Americans’ reported readiness for a woman president did not increase intentions to vote for a woman (Study 3). However, across three experiments (including one preregistered on a nationally representative sample), presenting evidence that women earn as much support as men in US general elections increased Democratic primary voters’ intentions to vote for women presidential candidates, an effect driven by heightened perceptions of these candidates’ electability (Studies 4 to 6). These findings highlight that social change efforts can be thwarted by people’s sense of what is possible, but this may be overcome by credibly signaling others’ willingness to act collectively.

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When racism and sexism benefit Black and female politicians: Politicians’ ideology moderates prejudice’s effect more than politicians’ demographic background.

Cited by 10 publications

References 38 publications

Politicians’ Ideology Matters More than Their Race in Determining the Association between White Identity and Evaluation of the Politicians

Politicians’ Ideology Matters More than Their Race in Determining the Association between White Identity and Evaluation of the Politicians

Implicit and Explicit Prejudice Are Related to Explicit Support for Politicians Who are Conservative, but not White or Male, Mostly Because They Promote Inequality

Pragmatic bias impedes women’s access to political leadership

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