Faculty Sponsor

Dr. Elizabeth R. Brown, Dr. Curtis E. Phills

Faculty Sponsor College

College of Arts and Sciences

Faculty Sponsor Department

Psychology

Location

SOARS Virtual Conference

Presentation Website

https://unfsoars.domains.unf.edu/how-warmth-and-competence-stereotypes-predict-political-party-support/

Keywords

SOARS (Conference) (2020 : University of North Florida) -- Posters; University of North Florida. Office of Undergraduate Research; University of North Florida. Graduate School; College students – Research -- Florida – Jacksonville -- Posters; University of North Florida – Undergraduates -- Research -- Posters; University of North Florida. Department of Psychology -- Research -- Posters; Social Sciences -- Research – Posters

Abstract

People use stereotypes and party affiliation when making voting decisions (Leeper, 1991). Voters are also known to support the political party they view positively (Graham, Nosek, & Haidt, 2012). How do stereotypes influence political party support? Since warmth and competence are used to evaluate social groups (Cuddy et al. 2008), we examined how the warmth and competence stereotypes associated with political parties were related to voter support. We surveyed participants using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (n = 361). Participant’s ages ranged from twenty to seventy-three years old. These participants rated Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Libertarians on competence, warmth, and support (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). We expect to find that competence and warmth for a political party (and their interaction) aids in predicting support for that party. To support our initial hypothesis we would need to find in our regressions that the more extensively a party was rated as warm or competent, the more participants support the party. Future research could take more political parties into account, such as the Green Party, or apply these predictive models to individual candidates. Research could also be expanded to examine using communion and agency towards parties as a predictive measure of elections.

Included in

Psychology Commons

Share

COinS
 
Apr 8th, 12:00 AM Apr 8th, 12:00 AM

How Warmth and Competence Stereotypes Predict Political Party Support

SOARS Virtual Conference

People use stereotypes and party affiliation when making voting decisions (Leeper, 1991). Voters are also known to support the political party they view positively (Graham, Nosek, & Haidt, 2012). How do stereotypes influence political party support? Since warmth and competence are used to evaluate social groups (Cuddy et al. 2008), we examined how the warmth and competence stereotypes associated with political parties were related to voter support. We surveyed participants using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (n = 361). Participant’s ages ranged from twenty to seventy-three years old. These participants rated Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Libertarians on competence, warmth, and support (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). We expect to find that competence and warmth for a political party (and their interaction) aids in predicting support for that party. To support our initial hypothesis we would need to find in our regressions that the more extensively a party was rated as warm or competent, the more participants support the party. Future research could take more political parties into account, such as the Green Party, or apply these predictive models to individual candidates. Research could also be expanded to examine using communion and agency towards parties as a predictive measure of elections.

https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/soars/2020/spring_2020/93

 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.