Race, gender, and the U.S. presidency: a comparison of implicit and explicit biases in the electorate
Recent U.S. elections have witnessed the Democrats nominating both black and female presidential candidates, as well as a black and female vice president. The increasing diversity of the U.S. political elite heightens the importance of understanding the psychological factors influencing voter suppor...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/160527 |
| _version_ | 1811679196263481344 |
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| author | Calvert, Gemma Anne Evans, Geoffrey Pathak, Abhishek |
| author2 | Nanyang Business School |
| author_facet | Nanyang Business School Calvert, Gemma Anne Evans, Geoffrey Pathak, Abhishek |
| author_sort | Calvert, Gemma Anne |
| collection | NTU |
| description | Recent U.S. elections have witnessed the Democrats nominating both black and female presidential candidates, as well as a black and female vice president. The increasing diversity of the U.S. political elite heightens the importance of understanding the psychological factors influencing voter support for, or opposition to, candidates of different races and genders. In this study, we investigated the relative strength of the implicit biases for and against hypothetical presidential candidates that varied by gender and race, using an evaluative priming paradigm on a broadly representative sample of U.S. citizens (n = 1076). Our main research question is: Do measures of implicit racial and gender biases predict political attitudes and voting better than measures of explicit prejudice? We find that measures of implicit bias are less strongly associated with political attitudes and voting than are explicit measures of sexist attitudes and modern racism. Moreover, once demographic characteristics and explicit prejudice are controlled statistically, measures of implicit bias provide little incremental predictive validity. Overall, explicit prejudice has a far stronger association with political preferences than does implicit bias. |
| first_indexed | 2024-10-01T03:05:19Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | ntu-10356/160527 |
| institution | Nanyang Technological University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-10-01T03:05:19Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ntu-10356/1605272023-05-19T07:31:17Z Race, gender, and the U.S. presidency: a comparison of implicit and explicit biases in the electorate Calvert, Gemma Anne Evans, Geoffrey Pathak, Abhishek Nanyang Business School Social sciences::Political science Implicit Bias Evaluative Priming Recent U.S. elections have witnessed the Democrats nominating both black and female presidential candidates, as well as a black and female vice president. The increasing diversity of the U.S. political elite heightens the importance of understanding the psychological factors influencing voter support for, or opposition to, candidates of different races and genders. In this study, we investigated the relative strength of the implicit biases for and against hypothetical presidential candidates that varied by gender and race, using an evaluative priming paradigm on a broadly representative sample of U.S. citizens (n = 1076). Our main research question is: Do measures of implicit racial and gender biases predict political attitudes and voting better than measures of explicit prejudice? We find that measures of implicit bias are less strongly associated with political attitudes and voting than are explicit measures of sexist attitudes and modern racism. Moreover, once demographic characteristics and explicit prejudice are controlled statistically, measures of implicit bias provide little incremental predictive validity. Overall, explicit prejudice has a far stronger association with political preferences than does implicit bias. Nanyang Technological University Published version This research was funded from an internal NTU start-up grant, awarded to G. Calvert. 2022-07-26T05:38:25Z 2022-07-26T05:38:25Z 2022 Journal Article Calvert, G. A., Evans, G. & Pathak, A. (2022). Race, gender, and the U.S. presidency: a comparison of implicit and explicit biases in the electorate. Behavioral Sciences, 12(1), 17-. https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs12010017 2076-328X https://hdl.handle.net/10356/160527 10.3390/bs12010017 35049628 2-s2.0-85123942053 1 12 17 en Behavioral Sciences © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). application/pdf |
| spellingShingle | Social sciences::Political science Implicit Bias Evaluative Priming Calvert, Gemma Anne Evans, Geoffrey Pathak, Abhishek Race, gender, and the U.S. presidency: a comparison of implicit and explicit biases in the electorate |
| title | Race, gender, and the U.S. presidency: a comparison of implicit and explicit biases in the electorate |
| title_full | Race, gender, and the U.S. presidency: a comparison of implicit and explicit biases in the electorate |
| title_fullStr | Race, gender, and the U.S. presidency: a comparison of implicit and explicit biases in the electorate |
| title_full_unstemmed | Race, gender, and the U.S. presidency: a comparison of implicit and explicit biases in the electorate |
| title_short | Race, gender, and the U.S. presidency: a comparison of implicit and explicit biases in the electorate |
| title_sort | race gender and the u s presidency a comparison of implicit and explicit biases in the electorate |
| topic | Social sciences::Political science Implicit Bias Evaluative Priming |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/160527 |
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