September 22nd, 2013
In Business
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If you enjoy this article, see the other most popular articles
If you enjoy this article, see the other most popular articles
Women prefer positive message, men prefer negative
(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.
Results
Our empirical results show large differences in the gender response to political persuasion strategies. In fact, male and female voters respond in opposite ways to the degree of aggressiveness of the opponent’s campaign.
Negative advertising increases men’s turnout by about eight percentage points, but has no effect on women.
Gender differences are even stronger for electoral choices.Women vote more for the opponent (by eight points) and less for the incumbent (by eight points) if exposed to the opponent’s positive campaign.
Exactly the opposite happens for men.Men vote less for the opponent (by 11 points) and more for the incumbent (by 12.7 points) if exposed to the opponent’s positive campaign.
Overall, these effects amount to persuasion rates ranging from 21% to 24%.Why do men and women respond differently to political advertisement?
Several channels may be at work.
Voters may cluster along gender-identity lines.
Since the 2011 election in Milan was a mixed-gender race between a female incumbent and a male opponent, women might have particularly disliked a negative campaign by a man against a woman. However, we exploit a ‘natural’ experiment, consisting of an attack by the (female) incumbent – Letizia Moratti – to her (male) opponent – Giuliano Pisapia during a campaign debate on Sky TV, to show that gender identification is not a first-order mechanism in our sample.Women may have stronger preferences for redistribution and be more left leaning, therefore being more in favor of the (left-wing) opponent.
Although this correlation is confirmed in our sample, ideology only partially accounts for the higher responsiveness of women to the positive campaign run by the left-wing candidate.Residual gender differences that might be interpreted according to the economic and neuro-psychological literature.
Women may just have a lower taste for competition – especially if aggressive, both when they are active players – as shown by the existing literature – and when they are passive receivers of messages of competitive persuasion – as in our experiment (Paserman 2007).
Post external references
- 1
http://www.voxeu.org/article/persuasive-communication-men-and-women-react-differently
February 8, 2022 9:33 am
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