Skip to main content
Log in

Compassionate Democrats and Tough Republicans: How Ideology Shapes Partisan Stereotypes

Political Behavior Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Trait stereotypes are a fundamental form of social cognition that influence public opinion. A long line of literature has established partisan stereotypes of politicians, but we know less about the source of these stereotypes and whether they apply to partisans in the mass public. Building on moral psychology, I argue that the public holds clear stereotypes about the moral character of mass partisans and that these stereotypes are rooted in ideology. Using a national survey, I show that Democrats and Republicans prioritize different aspects of moral character, but that these differences are more strongly linked to political ideology than partisan identity. Next, I show that much of the public holds trait stereotypes about mass partisans that reflect these differences in trait importance. Finally, I provide experimental evidence that people use partisan cues to draw stereotypical inferences about individuals, but that these inferences are more responsive to ideological information than partisan cues. Overall, the results suggest that partisan stereotypes are not merely outgroup animus, but reflect the values and motivations that differentiate the parties.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Notes

  1. Data and replication code are available in the Political Behavior dataverse (https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/T4GBDS).

  2. For related theoretical frameworks, see Lakoff (2010), Schwartz (1992), and Gastil et al. (2011).

  3. See Online Appendix for sample descriptive statistics.

  4. The other half of the sample answered the same questions regarding the traits they value in co-partisans. These results are analyzed elsewhere.

  5. Moreover, common measures of ideological self-identification are prone to measurement error due to differing interpretations of the terms (e.g., Simas 2018).

  6. Although ideology is arguably better represented by at least two dimensions (Feldman and Johnston 2014), I am forced to rely on a single dimension due to the limited set of issue attitudes measured in the CCES.

  7. These specific control variables were selected as they are likely to be correlated with partisanship, ideology, and views about morality, and they are also plausibly prior to partisan identity and ideology.

  8. None of the substantive conclusions reported here change when correcting for multiple comparisons (Benjamini and Hochberg 1995).

  9. Once again, substantive conclusions are unaffected by the correction for multiple comparisons.

  10. Moreover, the coefficient for ideology was significantly different from the coefficient for partisanship in every case (ps < 0.05) with the exception of wholesome (p = 0.19).

  11. To measure political awareness, I scale together two factual knowledge items (control of the House and Senate), political interest, and attention to the news using a hybrid item response model.

  12. As an example, a Republican would receive a positive score for compassion (indicating an advantage for Democrats) if he rated Republicans a 5 on all traits and rated Democrats a 4 on compassion, but a 3 on the remaining traits.

  13. For example, this sample leans Democratic, skewing the raw trait scores in favor of Democrats.

  14. The substantive conclusions are unchanged by the correction for multiple comparisons.

  15. The small size of this subsample (n = 145) makes estimates uncertain, but independents rate Democrats as more compassionate and fair-minded, though only the former effect is statistically significant. Independents also rate Republicans relatively higher on respectful, loyal and wholesome, though only respectful is statistically significant.

  16. Political sophistication is positively related to the strength of partisan stereotypes among Democrats (r = 0.39), but not among Republicans (r = − 0.04).

  17. I initially recruited 575 respondents. However, to address recent concerns about fraudulent respondents on MTurk, I removed respondents whose IP address indicated they were not located in the U.S. or were using a virtual private server to mask their location (Kennedy et al. 2018). Results are substantively similar when using the full sample (see Online Appendix).

  18. This study was preceded by a similar study that did not include the experimental conditions with ideological information but no party cues. These results are similar and are shown in the Appendix. Respondents who participated in the first study were not allowed to participate in the second.

  19. See Online Appendix for sample descriptive statistics.

  20. The issues used were: government provision of services, same-sex marriage, government involvement in health care, environmental regulation, welfare benefits, foreign intervention, taxes and spending, undocumented immigrants, climate change, privacy and civil liberties, police reform, and gender identity.

  21. These two trait terms also seem to do a better job tapping into the intended latent dimension according to a factor analysis (Clifford 2018).

  22. As a manipulation check, respondents were also asked to rate the target’s ideology on a 7-point scale.

  23. The manipulation check supports this claim. When issue information is absent, the Democrat and Republican were perceived as further apart ideologically (difference = 2.88, p < 0.001) than when both candidates were ideologically moderate (difference = 1.92, p < 0.001). This difference-in-differences is statistically significant (b = 0.97, p < 0.001), demonstrating that the manipulation worked. However, respondents still clearly perceive an ideological difference between the two moderate partisans, demonstrating the ideology manipulation is imperfect.

  24. The results are also quite similar when disaggregating the index into individual traits, though Republicans do not tend to associate fairness with liberalism. See the Online Appendix for details.

  25. As an additional test, I specified an interactive model that allowed each of the nine treatment effects to vary by levels of political sophistication (see Appendix for full model details). After correcting for multiple comparisons, none of the nine interaction terms are statistically significant (ps > 0.10).

References

  • Acharya, A., Blackwell, M., & Sen, M. (2018). Analyzing causal mechanisms in survey experiments. Political Analysis, 26(4), 357–378.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling the false discovery rate: A practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 57(1), 289–300.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berinsky, A. J., Huber, G. A., & Lenz, G. S. (2012). Evaluating online labor markets for experimental research: Amazon. Com’s mechanical Turk. Political Analysis, 20(3), 351–368.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berinsky, A. J., & Mendelberg, T. (2005). The indirect effects of discredited stereotypes in judgments of Jewish leaders. American Journal of Political Science, 49(4), 845–864.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brambilla, M., & Leach, C. W. (2014). On the importance of being moral: The distinctive role of morality in social judgment. Social Cognition, 32(4), 397–408.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brambilla, M., Rusconi, P., Sacchi, S., & Cherubini, P. (2011). Looking for honesty: The primary role of morality (vs. sociability and competence) in information gathering. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41(2), 135–143.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brambilla, M., Sacchi, S., Pagliaro, S., & Ellemers, N. (2013). Morality and intergroup relations: Threats to safety and group image predict the desire to interact with outgroup and ingroup members. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(5), 811–821.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brambilla, M., et al. (2012). You want to give a good impression? Be honest! moral traits dominate group impression formation. The British Journal of Social Psychology/The British Psychological Society, 51(1), 149–166.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chambers, J. R., Baron, R. S., & Inman, M. L. (2006). Misperceptions in intergroup conflict. Disagreeing about what we disagree about. Psychological Science, 17(1), 38–45.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chambers, J. R., & Melnyk, D. (2006). Why do I hate thee? Conflict misperceptions and intergroup mistrust. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(10), 1295–1311.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, S. (2014). Linking issue stances and trait inferences: A theory of moral exemplification. The Journal of Politics, 76(03), 698–710.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, S. (2018). Reassessing the structure of presidential character. Electoral Studies, 54, 240–247.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, S., Jewell, R. M., & Waggoner, P. D. (2015). Are samples drawn from mechanical Turk valid for research on political ideology? Research & Politics, 2(4), 1–9.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coppock, A. (2018). Generalizing from survey experiments conducted on mechanical Turk: A replication approach. Political Science Research and Methods. https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2018.10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Egan, P. J. (2013). Partisan priorities: How issue ownership drives and distorts american politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellemers, N., Pagliaro, S., Barreto, M., & Leach, C. W. (2008). Is it better to be moral than smart? The Effects of morality and competence norms on the decision to work at group status improvement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(6), 1397–1410.

    Google Scholar 

  • Farwell, L., & Weiner, B. (2000). Bleeding hearts and the heartless: Popular perceptions of liberal and conservative ideologies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26(7), 845–852.

    Google Scholar 

  • Federico, C. M., Weber, C. R., Ergun, D., & Hunt, C. (2013). Mapping the connections between politics and morality: The multiple sociopolitical orientations involved in moral intuition. Political Psychology, 34(4), 589–610.

    Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, S., & Johnston, C. (2014). Understanding the determinants of political ideology: Implications of structural complexity. Political Psychology, 35(3), 337–358.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gastil, J., Braman, D., Kahan, D. M., & Slovic, P. (2011). The cultural orientation of mass political opinion. PS: Political Science & Politics, 44(4), 711–714.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gerber, A. S., & Green, D. P. (2012). Field experiments: Design, analysis, and interpretation. New York: W. W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goggin, S. N., & Theodoridis, A. G. (2017). Disputed ownership: parties, issues, and traits in the minds of voters. Political Behavior, 39(3), 675–702.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodwin, G. P. (2015). Moral character in person perception. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(1), 38–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodwin, G. P., Piazza, J., & Rozin, P. (2014). Moral character predominates in person perception and evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(1), 148–168.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), 1029–1046.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., & Haidt, J. (2012). The Moral stereotypes of liberals and conservatives: Exaggeration of differences across the political spectrum. PLoS ONE, 7(12), e50092.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graham, J., et al. (2011). Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 366–385.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graham, J., et al. (2013). Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 55–130.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research, 20(1), 98–116.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J., & Joseph, C. (2004). Intuitive ethics: How innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variable virtues. Daedalus, 133(4), 55–66.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hayes, D. (2005). Candidate qualities theory through a partisan of trait ownership. American Journal of Political Science, 49(4), 908–923.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirsh, J. B., DeYoung, C. G., Xiaowen, X., & Peterson, J. B. (2010). Compassionate liberals and polite conservatives: Associations of agreeableness with political ideology and moral values. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(5), 655–664.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huddy, L., & Terkildsen, N. (1993). Gender stereotypes and the perception of male and female candidates. American Journal of Political Science, 37(1), 119.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, C. D., Lavine, H., & Federico, C. M. (2017). Open versus closed: Personality, identity, and the politics of redistribution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jonathan H. (2013). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion (Vintage). Vintage.

  • Jonathan H. (2016). Are moral foundations heritable? Probably.” RighteousMind.com. http://righteousmind.com/are-moral-foundations-heritable-probably/ (November 7, 2016).

  • Jost, J. T., Federico, C. M., & Napier, J. L. (2009). Political ideology: Its structure, functions, and elective affinities. Annual Review of Psychology, 60(1), 307–337.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kam, C. D., & Kinder, D. R. (2012). Ethnocentrism as a short-term force in the 2008 American Presidential Election. American Journal of Political Science, 56(2), 326–340.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy, R., et al. (2018). The shape of and solutions to the MTurk quality crisis.” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3272468.

  • Kertzer, J. D., Powers, K. E., Rathbun, B. C., & Iyer, R. (2014). Moral support: How moral values shape foreign policy attitudes. The Journal of Politics, 76(03), 825–840.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koleva, S. P., et al. (2012). Tracing the threads: How five moral concerns (especially purity) help explain culture war attitudes. Journal of Research in Personality, 46(2), 184–194.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff, G. (2010). Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leach, C. W., Ellemers, N., & Barreto, M. (2007). Group virtue: The importance of morality (vs. competence and sociability) in the positive evaluation of in-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(2), 234–249.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levendusky, M. (2009). The partisan sort: How liberals became democrats and conservatives became republicans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merolla, J. L., & Zechmeister, E. J. (2009). Terrorist threat, leadership, and the vote: Evidence from three experiments. Political Behavior, 31(4), 575–601.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merolla, J. L., & Zechmeister, E. J. (2015). Evaluating political leaders in times of terror and economic threat: The conditioning influence of politician Partisanship. The Journal of Politics, 1, 4. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002238161300039X.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mullinix, K. J., Leeper, T. J., Druckman, J. N., & Freese, J. (2016). The Generalizability of survey experiments. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 2(02), 109–138.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pagliaro, S., Ellemers, N., & Barreto, M. (2011). Sharing moral values: Anticipated Ingroup respect as a determinant of adherence to morality-based (but not competence-based) group norms. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(8), 1117–1129.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peffley, M., Hurwitz, J., & Sniderman, P. M. (1997). Racial stereotypes and whites’ political views of blacks in the context of welfare and crime. American Journal of Political Science, 41(1), 30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Petrocik, J. R. (1996). Issue ownership in presidential elections, with a 1980 Case Study. American Journal of Political Science, 40(3), 825.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robison, J., & Mullinix, K. J. (2016). Elite polarization and public opinion: How polarization is communicated and its effects. Political Communication, 33(2), 261–282.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scherer, A. M., Windschitl, P. D., & Graham, J. (2014). An ideological house of mirrors: Political stereotypes as exaggerations of motivated social cognition differences. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(2), 201–209.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sides, J., & Gross, K. (2013). Stereotypes of Muslims and support for the war on terror. The Journal of Politics, 75(03), 583–598.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simas, E. N. (2018). Ideology through the partisan lens: Applying anchoring vignettes to U.S. Survey research. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 30(3), 343–364.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, K. B., et al. (2016). Intuitive ethics and political orientations: Testing moral foundations as a theory of political ideology. American Journal of Political Science, 61(2), 424–437.

    Google Scholar 

  • van der Lee, R., Ellemers, N., Scheepers, D., & Rutjens, B. T. (2017). In or out? How the perceived morality (vs. competence) of Prospective group members affects acceptance and rejection”. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 748–762.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Prooijen, A.-M., & Ellemers, N. (2015). Does it pay to be moral? How indicators of morality and competence enhance organizational and work team attractiveness. British Journal of Management, 26(2), 225–236.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, C. R., & Federico, C. M. (2013). Moral foundations and heterogeneity in ideological preferences. Political Psychology, 34(1), 107–126.

    Google Scholar 

  • Winter, Nicholas J. G. (2010). Masculine republicans and feminine democrats: Gender and Americans’ explicit and implicit images of the political parties. Political Behavior, 32(4), 587–618.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Scott Clifford.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 466 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Clifford, S. Compassionate Democrats and Tough Republicans: How Ideology Shapes Partisan Stereotypes. Polit Behav 42, 1269–1293 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-019-09542-z

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-019-09542-z

Keywords

Navigation