Abstract
A growing body of work suggests that exposure to subtle racial cues prompts white voters to penalize black candidates, and that the effects of these cues may influence outcomes indirectly via perceptions of candidate ideology. We test hypotheses related to these ideas using two experiments based on national samples. In one experiment, we manipulated the race of a candidate (Barack Obama vs. John Edwards) accused of sexual impropriety. We found that while both candidates suffered from the accusation, the scandal led respondents to view Obama as more liberal than Edwards, especially among resentful and engaged whites. Second, overall evaluations of Obama declined more sharply than for Edwards. In the other experiment, we manipulated the explicitness of the scandal, and found that implicit cues were more damaging for Obama than explicit ones.
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Notes
YouGovPolimetrix uses sample matching. In this technique, a random national sample is drawn and serves as the “target” sample. Members of a large opt-in pool of participants who already have Internet access are then individually matched to elements (individuals) in the target sample. The opt-in respondents were matched to the target sample on gender, age, race, education, party identification and ideology. The key attitudinal indicators in our study matched other representative sample estimates very well. For example, the Racial Resentment mean in our study is .70 and in the 2008 ANES its mean is .62 (Tesler and Sears 2009). Since our goal is to measure the impact of a manipulation, and not to make precise point estimates of population opinion, we believe the Polimetrix approach is suitable. Random assignment to treatment and control groups means we can make strong, internally valid estimates of the effects of scandal.
We do not have enough cases for an analysis of African-Americans and other non-whites.
We confirmed this fact with Vice President of Projects Samantha Luks. Our study was run as its own module. Thus any prior exposure to an experimental manipulation was not recent.
While media coverage did not comment much on his personality in 2007, reports in 2004 emphasized Edwards’ ability to connect well with the public and his photogenic appearance, much as it did for Obama in 2007–2008.
By contrast, only four percent of respondents had never heard of Clinton or had no opinion of her. The January wave of the 2008–2009 Panel Study, conducted by the American National Election Study, found that if anything Obama was more well-known than Edwards. In that survey 26 percent of respondents failed to express a preference about Obama, compared to 38 percent of the sample who neither liked nor disliked Edwards. When the experiment was conducted, Hillary Clinton was widely seen as the Democratic favorite, with Obama and Edwards competing as underdogs. The Pew Center for People and the Press conducted a series of trail heats from March 2007 through November 2007. In every one of these polls, both Obama and Edwards ran well behind Clinton.
We refer to Obama as black or African-American throughout this paper as he has indicated that he perceives himself to be a black man (Obama 2004).
The phrasing of this item is: blacks (whites) tend to be sexually promiscuous, meaning they have sexual relations with a number of partners on a casual basis. Would you say this statement describes blacks (whites) extremely well, quite well, not too well, or not well at all? Using a similar measure, McConnaughy and White (2009) also found that about 40% of white respondents agreed with this view.
Specifically, respondents were shown a screen that read, “The articles you read at the beginning of this survey were written by University of Michigan researchers who wanted to test how people respond to news stories. These stories are completely fictitious and were created only for research purposes. The presidential candidates have not been rumored to engage in extra-marital affairs and the women described in the stories are completely fictitious. The researchers constructed these stories, including any photos that may have been included, in order to learn how people might react when different candidates are associated with sexual scandals. We wish to stress that the personal biographies of Senators Obama and Edwards were not accurately described in the story you may have read and there are no allegations that either candidate has been unfaithful to their spouse. Please do not, therefore, base your own evaluations of these candidates on the material you viewed in this study. Thank you for being a part of this university-sponsored study. Your participation and responses are completely confidential.”
To check that no campaign events confounded the experimental results, we checked trends over time. There is no systematic change with date of interview in the candidate feeling thermometer ratings in any of the conditions.
Randomization checks showed that the pre-treatment variables are equally distributed at p > .10 except for political interest. An F-test on level of interest is significant at p = .004 when interest is coded as high versus other, and is significant at p = .015 when interest is coded as low versus other. The ideology ratings are not affected by level of interest. We display results for the full whites sample and for those with higher interest only; we do so for theoretical reasons and because this guards against the confounding effect of interest.
Racial stereotypes have similar moderating effects as the racial resentment scale (see Appendix Table 6). As with our racial resentment analysis, respondents react more negatively to the scandal when it implicates Obama than they do when Edwards is invoked. Additionally, respondents in the high stereotype group react more negatively to the scandal than those in the low stereotype group. The stereotype measure is constructed by taking the averaged difference in agreement scores with “lazy” and “untrustworthy” stereotypes for items that ask separately about whites and blacks (see Appendix for question wording and details about scale construction).
There is virtually no correlation between resentment and interest. The two scales are correlated at .02, which is insignificant in both a statistical and a substantive sense.
The treatment effect is not mediated by rating the candidate as liberal. The effects of the scandal are not significantly diminished for those who do not rate Obama as liberal. However, rating Obama as liberal does influence his overall feeling thermometer evaluation (mean rating if liberal = 40, mean rating if rated not liberal = 62, t = 6.05, p = .001) among white, interested respondents.
Consistent with the notion that racial resentment is measuring a racial predisposition is the fact that its moderating effects are not replicated by nonracial predispositions including partisanship or ideology. Also, there is no distinguishable difference between partisan groups. Respondent ideology moderates the effects but these are inconsistent and run in opposite directions for the two dependent variables in the paper (liberal rating and feeling thermometer). The scandal effect (Obama—control) on Obama ideology rating is very similar for conservatives (21 points, p = .001) and liberals (23 points, p = .03). The race effect (Obama scandal–Edwards scandal) is larger for conservatives (91–77 = 14 points, p = .03) than for liberals (50–51 = −1 point, not significant). On feeling thermometer ratings the scandal effect on Obama (scandal–control) is the same for liberals (−5 points, not significant) and conservatives (−5 points, not significant). The race effect (Obama scandal–Edwards scandal) approaches significance among liberals (67–73 = −6 points, p = .09) and but not among conservatives (30–27 = 3 points, not significant). Liberals and conservatives have statistically indistinguishable race × scandal effects. We would like to address recent work suggesting that liberals are more susceptible to the effects of racial resentment (Feldman and Huddy 2005), but our sample size is too small.
This study ran in August of 2007 and used the same sampling procedures as Study 1. Randomization checks showed that the pre-treatment variables are equally distributed at p > .10. As in the first study, a manipulation check found that evaluations of Edwards and Obama as sexually promiscuous were significantly higher (p < .01) in both implicit and explicit scandal conditions than in the control condition.
The scandal effect of the implicit anti-Obama scandal on feeling thermometer ratings in Study 2 replicates the scandal effect of the identical message in Study 1. We find a nearly identical scandal effect of −6 for the implicit condition relative to the no-scandal control condition (marginally statistically significant at p = .09, t = 1.35). On ratings of Obama’s ideology the scandal effect of the implicit anti-Obama scandal in Study 2 is 4 (ns) for the whole sample and 12 for the interested (t = 1.29, p = .10). Since we do not have the identical Edwards scandal condition in Study 2, we cannot compare Obama and Edwards in Study 2.
We note as a caveat that our effects cannot distinguish between two types of racial effects, one due to stereotype of promiscuity, the other due to negative reactions to sexual relationships between black men and white women. Nevertheless, in either case our analysis rules out a nonracial explanation for the effects.
All studies to date, including ours, have failed to examine black female candidates, and the application to their case remains uncertain given that stereotypes are gendered (McConnaughy and White 2009).
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Acknowledgments
We thank Oleg Bespalov and John Lovett for valuable research assistance and Spencer Piston for helpful comments. Berinsky thanks the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences for research support.
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Appendix
Appendix
See Table 6.
In Wave 1 (Pre-experimental)
Political Interest
Politically interested respondents are those who were “somewhat” or “very much” interested. Respondents who answered “Don’t Know” were excluded from analyses.
Some people don’t pay much attention to political campaigns. How about you? Would you say that you have been very much interested, somewhat interested or not much interested in the campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination so far this year?
– Very Much Interested; Somewhat Interested; Not Much Interested; Don’t Know
Racial Resentment
A continuous scale averaging two items, with “Generations” reverse coded, coded 1 for most resentful, 0 for least resentful. The scale was used to create a median split to demarcate groups that were high (at or above .67) and low (below .67) in racial resentment. Approximately 50 subjects clustered at the median and added to the high-resentment group since the median was above the halfway point of the scale. Consequently, the high-resentment group was somewhat larger than the low-resentment group.
Now please tell me for each statement below whether you agree strongly, agree somewhat, disagree somewhat or disagree strongly:
The Irish, Italians, Jews and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors (strongly agree/somewhat agree/somewhat disagree/strongly disagree).
Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class. (strongly agree/somewhat agree/somewhat disagree/strongly disagree).
Racial Stereotyping
A continuous scale averaging the difference between blacks/whites for both items, coded from −1 for most negative about blacks to 1 for most negative about whites with 0 as a neutral point. Two groups were created by categorizing those below 0 as high in racial stereotyping and those at or above 0 as low in racial stereotyping.
Where would you rate blacks (whites) on a scale of 1 to 7, Where 1 indicates hard working, 7 means lazy, and 4 indicates most blacks (whites) are not closer to one end or the other. (Item recoded to 0–1 with 1 being lazy.)
Where would you rate blacks (whites) on a scale of 1 to 7, Where 1 indicates trustworthy, 7 means untrustworthy, and 4 indicates most blacks (whites) are not closer to one end or the other. (Item recoded to 0–1 with 1 being untrustworthy.)
In Wave 2 (Post-Experimental)
Candidate Ideology
Now let me ask you a question about (Barack Obama / John Edwards): “Do you think he is a liberal, a conservative, a moderate, or haven’t you thought much about this?”
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Liberal; Moderate; Conservative; Don’t know
Candidate Feeling Thermometer
Now, I’d like to get your feelings toward some of our political leaders and other people who are in the news these days. I’ll read the name of a person and I’d like you to rate that person using something we call the feeling thermometer. Ratings between 50 degrees and 100 degrees mean that you feel favorable and warm toward the person. Ratings between 0 degrees and 50 degrees mean that you don’t feel favorable toward the person and that you don’t care too much for that person. You would rate the person at the 50 degree mark if you don’t feel particularly warm or cold toward the person [randomize names].
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Barack Obama
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John Edwards
Candidate Traits
Think about Barack Obama (John Edwards). In your opinion, does the phrase “he is trustworthy” describe Barack Obama (John Edwards) extremely well, quite well, not too well, or not well at all?
Does the phrase “he is hardworking” describe Barack Obama (John Edwards) extremely well, quite well, not too well, or not well at all?
Does the phrase “sexually promiscuous” (meaning he has sexual relations with a number of partners on a casual basis) describe Barack Obama (John Edwards) extremely well, quite well, not too well, or not well at all?
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Berinsky, A.J., Hutchings, V.L., Mendelberg, T. et al. Sex and Race: Are Black Candidates More Likely to be Disadvantaged by Sex Scandals?. Polit Behav 33, 179–202 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-010-9135-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-010-9135-8