Judging scandal: Standards or bias in politics

ABSTRACT

As the number of political scandals rises, we examined the circumstances that might influence how a politician would be judged as a result of a scandal. Specifically, we hypothesized that ingroup bias theory and shifting standards theory would produce different patterns of judgements. In two studies, we found support for the ingroup bias theory, such that participants rated the fictitious politician’s public approval and perceived character as higher if the politician was a member of their own political party (i.e. their ingroup) than if the politician was a member of the another political party (i.e. their outgroup). These results may explain, in part, why people may judge politicians involved in scandal more or less harshly depending on whether they are an ingroup member or outgroup member.

KEYWORDS:

• infidelity
• ingroup bias
• political scandal
• shifting standards
• social identity theory

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Correction

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at (https://osf.io/mxf5w/)

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at Study 1 (https://osf.io/mxf5w/) and Study 2 (https://osf.io/mxf5w/)

Notes

1. When political identification and socio-sexual orientation were excluded from the analyses, Senator’s group status again had a small effect on public approval, F(1, 124) = 4.07, p = .046, η² _p = .03 (in addition to a moderate effect of scandal type, F(1, 124) = 5.73, p = .004, η² _p = .09).

2. Additional exploratory analyses were conducted using all participants, including those who failed the manipulation checks. In Study 1, there were no significant effects of any type on public approval rating. However, there was a main effect of scandal on perceived character, in that politicians admitting infidelity were perceived as having less positive traits than the other scandals.

3. Additional exploratory analyses were again conducted using all participants including those who failed the manipulation checks. In Study 2, there were two main effects for each of the dependent variables. That is, there was a main effect of group status, such that when the politician was an in-group member he was rated more favorably than when he was an out-group member. Additionally, there was also a main effect of scandal type for both of the dependent variables, in the predicted direction.

4. Additional exploratory analyses on a data set combining Study 1 and Study 2 data (with ratings of public approval and perceived character converted into z-scores) yielded the same results. Specifically, results for both DVs in this combined analyses indicated there was a main effect of scandal type, in that infidelity scored the lowest, then cosmetic surgery, then benign health-related surgery. For both DVs, there was also a main effect of the Senator’s group status, in that public approval and perceived character was higher when the Senator was an ingroup member than an outgroup member. There were no other significant effects, nor interactions in the combined analyses.