Grab ‘em by the masculinity: changes in gendered beliefs and sexism following the 2016 US presidential election

ABSTRACT

Due in part to Hillary Clinton’s historic candidacy, gender was a salient dimension of the 2016 US presidential election. In particular, the purported masculinity and femininity of each candidate was on display, discussed extensively in the media, and may have had an impact on citizens’ own gendered beliefs and behaviors. In a longitudinal study of 618 adults (women and men, Democrats and Republicans), we explored changes in gendered self concept and sexism from before to shortly after the election. Male Republicans increased in their conformity to masculine norms following the election, whereas male Democrats decreased in gender collective self-esteem and benevolent sexism and increased in willingness to intervene in everyday benevolent sexist situations. Few meaningful changes emerged for women of either political party. We suggest that the election of a hostilely sexist male leader deepened already held ideological positions and associated behaviors, at least for men.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• political Psychology
• women and gender
• sexuality

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Leighton Durham for assistance in conceptualizing the project and Corinne Futch for technical assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 A recent study (Peer et al. 2017) found that Prolific participants were largely comparable to those from MTurk, although Prolific users reported higher naiveté and lower levels of dishonest behavior.

Additional information

Funding

The Vada Allen Yeomans endowment at the University of Florida Foundation provided financial support for this research.