Prone to Agreement: Does Context Matter for Men and Women in Political Discussions?

ABSTRACT

In contemporary discourse, context matters for how people converse with one another about political topics. Discussion may occur face-to-face or online, topics of conversation may be controversial or less so, and gender dynamics may vary. We argue that men and women are affected differently by various contextual discussion factors. We employ a unique quasi-experiment that varies these factors and uses discourse analysis to examine patterns of gendered agreement and disagreement across seven exhaustive categories of response. These factors affect the likelihood of agreement by women and men, though gender-based differences are not dramatic. We do, however, find conditions that prompt men to be less agreeable than women. We also identify seven discrete rhetorical approaches to expressing agreement or disagreement in political discussion. Of these, three show evidence of gender-based patterns of usage. These findings have implications for how men and women use agreement strategies to cope with potential divisiveness in political discussion.

KEYWORDS:

• Political discussion
• gender
• deliberation

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank undergraduate student, Megan Cooper, for her assistance with transcripts and coding, Erin Cassese for assistance with data visualization, participants in the gender and political communications workshop sponsored by Louisiana State University in February 2020, as well as the time and helpful comments of peer reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We acknowledge that the gender binary offers an insufficient understanding of how gender and political discourse may interact and regret that the analysis offered in this writing is restrained to generalization to just these two categories of gender identification.

2. We derive our strategies organically from the transcripts rather than approach our analysis with pre-determined categories from prior research, though many of our categories (see Table 3) mirror those in the extant scholarship on discursive strategies.

3. Though there is occasionally criticism of the use of a student sample in social science research, we offer two justifications of the appropriateness for the use of this population. First, the sample is appropriate to the questions being examined (Basil 2009); students are engaging in a task typical for college students (political discussion), rather than a task that might make them distinct from a more representative adult sample (Jones and Sonner 2001). Second, our analyses make no pretense of generalizing univariate estimates of behavior, attitudes, or preferences to a broader population. Instead, they rely on multivariate comparisons capable of controlling for systematic variation (Basil et al. 2002).

4. The survey included demographic and political attitude/participation questions. This pretest revealed minimal differences between conditions, which should nonetheless be considered given the barriers to random assignment. Participants in the online groups were less likely to report that they often talk about politics with friends and family and that they feel comfortable doing so (p < 0.05). Women were somewhat more likely to say they have a hard time understanding political issues and scored lower on the excitability scale (p < 0.05). Since both these items would seem to indicate women would be less invested in political discussion overall, we take this as evidence that the conciliation that we find in this study are not accounted for by attitudinal differences.

5. This campaign is a completely voluntary lifestyle change. So while it certainly taps into some potentially controversial issues, the voluntary nature made the topic itself rather innocuous.

6. We recognize that both topics have the potential to tap into feminine expertise, theoretically advantaging women’s participation. While abortion may be inherently gendered, however, surveys have long found only small gender differences among the college-educated in their support for abortion access (Newport 2018). Issues of food are less clear. While there exists a perception of women having a “special relationship to food” (Julier and Lindenfeld 2005, 3), different domains exist that may interact with gender differently (e.g., shopping, preparation, consumption) and reveal conflicting expertise. In an attempt to neutralize a feminine advantage, our prompts frame Meatless Monday as a matter of individual liberty.

7. Script available by request.

8. The “other” response, which included requests for clarification, humorous asides, etc., was omitted in some tests to address the assumption of minimum frequency cell counts.

9. The non-verbal strategy was removed from the analysis since it was not applicable in the online medium.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennie Sweet-Cushman

Jennie Sweet-Cushman, PhD is an associate professor of political science at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her research interests lie broadly in gender and political psychology, with specific interests in American politics in role models, candidate emergence, and gender differences in political participation. Her recent work appears in Political Behavior, Politics, Groups, and Identities, and PS: Political Science & Politics. Her book, Inspired Citizens: How Political Role Models Shape American Politics is forthcoming with Temple University Press.

Mary Herring

Mary Herring (PhD., University of Georgia) is an associate professor of political science at Wayne State University. Her primary research in the politics of gender and race has been published in a wide variety of outlets. Her current work focuses on the influence of gender in determining whether and how citizens participate in politics through political discussion.

Elizabeth Prough

Elizabeth Prough is an Associate Dean and Professor in political science at Madonna University in Livonia, Michigan. Her research interests include political discussion, engagement, political knowledge, and tolerance, with a particular focus on gender. She has recent publications in Feminist Media Studies and Sage.

Fred Vultee

Fred Vultee (PhD, University of Missouri) is an associate professor of journalism in the Wayne State University Department of Communication. His research concentrates on news discourse and media practice, particularly how media routines affect attitudes about media credibility as well as national and cultural security. Before earning his doctorate, he was an editor at US newspapers for 25 years.