Which ingroup, when? Effects of gender, partisanship, veteran status, and evaluator identities on candidate evaluations

摘要

Military service is acknowledged as one of many elements voters use to evaluatecandidates, but it has primarily been studied as a univariate element of a candidate’sbiography. This project experimentally manipulates veteran status, gender,and partisanship as potentially interactive heuristics for evaluation of a hypotheticalcandidate specifically regarding military issues. We found an almost universalbenefit enjoyed by veterans over civilians regardless of whether the candidate was amember of the participant’s partisan ingroup or outgroup. We also found littleevidence of a gender penalty, and even a benefit for women candidates who wereveterans, though this benefit was restricted to evaluations from Republican women.We also found that Democratic respondents assigned a penalty to outgroup veteranmen candidates. We explain these nuanced findings in the context of moderationby gender mis/alignment between participant and candidate. Implications of thestudy are offered.