Perceived gender and political persuasion: a social media field experiment during the 2020 US Democratic presidential primary election.

ABSTRACT: Women have less influence than men in a variety of settings. Does this result from stereotypes that depict women as less capable, or biased interpretations of gender differences in behavior? We present a field experiment that-unbeknownst to the participants-randomized the gender of avatars assigned to Democrats using a social media platform we created to facilitate discussion about the 2020 Primary Election. We find that misrepresenting a man as a woman undermines his influence, but misrepresenting a woman as a man does not increase hers. We demonstrate that men's higher resistance to being influenced-and gendered word use patterns-both contribute to this outcome. These findings challenge prevailing wisdom that women simply need to behave more like men to overcome gender discrimination and

SUBMITTER: Combs A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10462641 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature