Punishment or Reward? An Experiment on the Effects of Sex and Gender Issues on Candidate Choice

Abstract

Gender stereotyping plays a prominent role in American politics. Voters transfer their stereotypes of women and men to candidates seeking office. In this article, we look at vote choice as it relates to sex differences and gender-related issues in several different contexts. First, we replicate previous experiments in which sex is the sole cue in low information contexts. Second, we vary the context of the contest by adding issue cues, thus creating a higher information context. Finally, we manipulate the issues themselves to determine the effects of assigning a male candidate an issue that is considered more important to women than to men. Overall, the results of our study suggest that voters' attributions of gender stereotypes to candidates based on their sex is complex.

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