Experimental
Tests of an Attitudinal Theory
of the Gender Gap in Voting
Alice
H. Eagly, Amanda Diekman, Monica Schneider, and Patrick Kulesa
Abstract
This research examined an attitudinal explanation
of the gender gap, by which differences in the attitudes that men
and women hold on social and political issues and in the positions
that candidates take on these issues can produce gender gaps in
voting. Two experiments portraying a hypothetical candidate for
congressional representative, one conducted with students and the
other with people sampled at a metropolitan airport, produced the
predicted attitudinal gender congeniality effect on voting: Participants
of each sex reported greater likelihood, compared with participants
of the other sex, of voting for the candidate who endorsed positions
typically favored more by their own sex than the other sex. This
attitudinal gender congeniality effect appeared to be mediated in
part by perceptions of candidates' political effectiveness.
This paper has been published in the Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Alice H. Eagly, Department of
Psychology, Northwestern University Amanda Diekman, Doctoral student, Department of
Psychology, Northwestern University Monica Schneider, Doctoral student, Department
of Political Science, University of Minnesota Patricik Kulesa, Doctoral student, Department of
Psychology, Northwestern University
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