Essays on Racial Ingroup Bias in Political Judgments Dissertation

Responding to Failure: Essays on Racial Ingroup Bias in Political Judgments

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Nyron N. Crawford, M.A.

Graduate Program in Political Science

The Ohio State University

2014

Dissertation Committee:

Kathleen M. McGraw, Advisor

Ismail K. White, Advisor

Wendy G. Smooth

Thomas E. Nelson

Nyron N. Crawford

2014

Abstract

In this dissertation, I use data collected from three experiments to examine the dynamics of racial ingroup bias. In particular, I look at the extent to which same-race politicians are either sanctioned or protected when they are linked to negative political events. I examine how different scenarios, or failure events, could have an impact on ingroup members’ judgments of a same-race elected official. In the first empirical chapter, I use an experiment to test the effects of an incumbent mayor’s race and the condition of his city on judgments of accountability for the incumbent (and candidates in an upcoming election). The second empirical chapter examines this bias in the context of an alleged scandal (i.e., sexual infidelity, financial impropriety), and considers whether socially reprehensible transgressions can be politically damaging, insofar as they preclude the accused elected official from the benefits of their group’s protection. Finally, the third empirical chapter experimentally explores the limits of black racial group loyalty as it relates to marginalized subgroups and subtypes of African Americans. Specifically, it investigates whether non-protypical black officials (i.e., female, homosexual, Republican) of the ingroup benefit similarly from ingroup bias when they are linked to a negative political event. In general, I argue that racial minorities (i.e., blacks), disadvantaged by unequal representation, engage in group-serving biases that tend to protect same-race politicians who are beset by political or moral dilemmas.

Acknowledgments

There are many people who deserve and have my gratitude, for without their support, guidance, and encouragement, this moment would not have been possible.

I would like to first express my deepest appreciation to my dissertation committee:

Kathleen M. McGraw, Ismail K. White, Wendy G. Smooth and Thomas E. Nelson. It has been to my great benefit to have a committee that recognized my potential as a political scientist, and that would make the necessary investments into my success. I want to begin by thanking Professor Nelson, who first introduced me to experimental methodology and the construction of effective questionnaires in the beginning years of graduate school, and whose talent for research design has had a lasting effect. I would also like to thank Professor

Smooth, who, through her work on race and gender, has always challenged me to think broadly, and more critically, about how I approach issues of identity. I especially want to thank my dissertation co-chairs, Professor McGraw and Professor White, to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude. I was the beneficiary of their guidance and their advocacy well in advance of being their student on record, and so words cannot express how thankful I am to them for always casting a vote of confidence in my favor. To them, I extend my heartfelt appreciation.

I would also like to thank my friends and colleagues in the Department of Political

Science at Ohio State. I was fortunate to enter graduate school with an incredibly talented

iii and supportive cohort, which included Jason Morgan, Emily Lamb, Eunbin Cheung, Emily

Lynch, Joshua Wu, C. Travis Bunner, and Grant Christiansen. A special thank you is offered to Jeff Budziak, who, for no reason other than I asked, always went out of his way to help me sort through my statistical confusion in my first few years. He was always gracious and charitable with his time. I would also like to thank Harwood K. McClerking, my former advisor, for seeing my potential and encouraging me to apply to Ohio State; and Corrine

McConnaughy for being an advocate on my behalf. Thanks to J. Bryan Cole, Darrylynn

Montague, Jason Keiber, Josh Kertzer, Joshua Wu, Katy Powers, Julian Wamble, and Marina

Duque for their camaraderie and support. To my fellow Americanists, Dustin Carnahan and

Emily K. Lynch, you have both been great friends, and I am all the better for the time we’ve shared. To my academic partner, Chryl N. Laird, thank you for always helping me build something better and for always being a friend.

My special thanks are extended to my family and my friends outside of political science; they have offered support and encouragement to me while in graduate school:

Jonathan C. Hall, Edwin Lee, DeLeon Gray, Ron Parker, Tony Gass, Justin McGee, Melissa

Crum, Tamara Butler, Brea Heidelberg, Laura Kaplan, Brandon Manning, Damien and

Camille Robinson, Marc D. Lee, Mrs. Drake, Julia Jordan-Zachery, and Lorenzo Morris. I am particularly grateful for the love, patience, and friendship of my partner Fashina M.

Aladé, and friends like Robert A. Bennett, III, Brea Heidelberg, Marcus T. Coleman, Grant

Crusor, Lindsey Ardrey, and Koshonna Brown. I would like to offer a special thanks to

James L. Moore, III, Ruth Peterson, and Cyndi Freeman, whose graciousness and inclusiveness enriched my graduate experience.

For their financial and/or technical assistance with the collection of data, I want to thank: Herb Weisberg, Rick Herrmann, and Diana Camella in the Department of Political

Science (Madison Scott Grant); Kathleen R. Wallace in the Graduate School (Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholarship; Preparing Future Faculty Program); the American

Political Science Association (Marguerite Ross Barnett Endowment Grant); the Criminal

Justice Research Center (Student Research Grant); the Behavioral Decision Making Initiative

(Small Grants Program); the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (Diversity Research Grant);

Patrice Dickerson and the Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (Graduate

Student Research Grant); the Black Graduate and Professional Student Caucus (William E.

Nelson Research Grant); and James L. Moore, III, and the Todd A. Bell National Resource

Center on the African American Male (Research Development Gift); Kim Mealy and the

American Political Science Association (Minority Fellows Program). I am incredibly grateful to all of these sponsors, whose support allowed me to recruit underrepresented populations of interest for the experiments herein. I wish to also acknowledge the help provided to me by Denise Huggins, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Central State University

(CSU), who, without knowing me, went above and beyond to accommodate me at CSU. I would like to express my great appreciation to Dan Lee, Panels Account Manager at

Qualtrics, who helped me secure the necessary participants for the Chapters 3 and 4. I would also like to thank the Department of Political Science at MIT, especially Melissa Nobles and

Adam Berinsky, for their hospitality and generosity during my time as a predoctoral fellow.

Last, I especially appreciate the experiences and opportunities made possible by my participation in the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Program at Howard University

v and the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute at Duke University. These programs have set out to increase the attainment of Ph.D. degrees by students from underrepresented groups, and to increase the diversity of those who pursue academic careers. I am inspired by – and incredibly thankful for – the extraordinary work and commitment of people like Christal L.

Evans (McNair) and Paula D. McClain (Bunche); they are true champions of diversity and inclusion in higher education. I also want to acknowledge several of the friends that I’ve made while participating in these programs, all of whom are brilliant in their own right and on their way to do great things: Koshonna Brown, Camille D. Burge, Chris Towler, Rachel

Gillum, and Mai Hassan.

While I am grateful to all those listed above, I alone am responsible for the work

(and any mistakes) that follows.

Vita

2004 ...... Danbury High School

2008 ...... B.A. Political Science, Howard University

2011 ...... M.A. Political Science, The Ohio State University

2011 to 2013 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Political Science, The Ohio State University

2011 to present ...... Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science, The Ohio State University

2013 to present ...... Diversity Dissertation Fellow, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Fields of Study

Major Field: Political Science

Minor Field: Political Psychology

Primary Areas of Interest: American Politics, Political Psychology, Race and Ethnic Politics,

Urban Politics, Public Opinion

vii

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgments ...... iii

Vita ...... vii

Table of Contents ...... viii

List of Tables ...... xiii

List of Figures ...... xv

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Ingroup Bias: Expectations in Brief ...... 4

The Empirical Strategy ...... 6

Overview ...... 10

References ...... 14

Chapter 2: Race, Performance, and Bias ...... 17

Community Satisfaction ...... 20

Accountability ...... 21

Racial Assignment Bias ...... 23

viii

Racial Crossover Voting ...... 25

Method ...... 27

The Incumbent ...... 32

Hypotheses ...... 33

Results ...... 34

Incumbent Accountability ...... 35

Issue Blame ...... 37

The Candidate ...... 38

Hypotheses ...... 40

Results ...... 41

Candidate Policy Evaluations ...... 43

Racial Crossover ...... 47

Discussion ...... 48

References ...... 53

Chapter 3: Race, Scandal, and Political Accounts ...... 58

Are there Differences in How Voters Penalize Politicians? ...... 60

Discounted Penalties? For Whom? ...... 62

Hypotheses ...... 63

Something-Gate: How Politicians Respond to Scandal ...... 64

Method ...... 67

Experiment 1 ...... 68

Results ...... 73

Seriousness of Accusations ...... 73

Representation ...... 74

Judgments and Evaluative Consequences of Scandal Allegations ...... 77

Discussion ...... 82

Experiment 2 ...... 84

Method ...... 85

Results ...... 86

Satisfaction with Response ...... 86

Judgments of the Elected Official ...... 87

Discussion ...... 88

References ...... 91

Chapter 4: Managing the Margins: Racial Atypicality, Scandal, and Political Judgments ...... 94

Model of Subgroups and Subtypes ...... 97

Race and Gender Subgroups ...... 99

Subtypes and Stigma ...... 101

Hypotheses ...... 105

Method ...... 108

Results ...... 113

Seriousness of Accusations ...... 113

Gender Subgroups ...... 113

Discussion ...... 121

References ...... 125

Chapter 5: Conclusion ...... 129

Review of Experimental Results ...... 130

Implications ...... 133

Real-world Analogues ...... 135

Limitations ...... 140

Future Research ...... 142

Responding to Failure ...... 144

References ...... 146

Appendix A: Experimental Treatment: City Brochure ...... 158

Appendix B: Experimental Treatment: City Audits ...... 160

Appendix C: Experimental Treatment: Candidate Profiles ...... 163

Appendix D: Experimental Treatment: Financial Scandal Conditions ...... 165

Appendix E: Experimental Treatment: Sex Scandal Conditions ...... 167

Appendix F: Experimental Treatments: Political Accounts ...... 169

Appendix G: Question Wording of Dependent Variables ...... 172

Appendix H: Experimental Treatments: Subgroups and Subtypes ...... 175

Appendix I: Question Wording of Dependent Variables ...... 180

xii

List of Tables

Table 1.1. Observations by Experiment ...... 9

Table 2.1. Demographic Characteristics of Sample ...... 29

Table 2.2. Mean Assignment of Accountability, by Race of Participant and Negative

Experimental Condition ...... 36

Table 2.3. Candidate Evaluation, by Race of Participant and Experimental Condition ...... 41

Table 2.4. Evaluation of Candidate Capability, by Treatment, Issue, and Race of Participant

...... 45

Table 3.1. Number of Observations, by Experimental Condition ...... 69

Table 3.2. Demographic Characteristics of Full Sample ...... 70

Table 3.3. Descriptive Statistics for Dependent Variables ...... 72

Table 3.4. Mean Evaluation of Representativeness, by Scandal Type, Race of Politician, and

Race of Participant ...... 76

Table 3.5. Mean Judgments by Black Participants, by Scandal and Race of Mayor ...... 78

Table 3.6. Mean Judgments by White Participants, by Scandal and Race of Mayor ...... 79

Table 3.7. Number of Observations, by Experimental Conditions ...... 86

Table 3.8. Satisfaction with Accounts ...... 87

Table 3.9. Mean Evaluations and One-way ANOVA, by Account ...... 88

Table 4.1. Demographic Characteristics of Full Sample ...... 109

xiii

Table 4.2. Observations, by Experimental Condition ...... 111

Table 4.3. Descriptive Statistics of Variables ...... 112

Table 4.4. Mean Evaluations, by Gender Subgroup ...... 114

xiv

List of Figures

Figure 2.1. Mean Community Evaluation, by Condition and Race ...... 34

Figure 2.2. Differences in Blame Assignment in Negative Condition, by Race of Participant and Policy Issue ...... 37

Figure 2.3. Differences in Candidate Evaluation, by Race of Participant and Experimental

Conditions ...... 43

Figure 2.4. Predicted Probabilities of Black Support for Candidates, by Condition (95% CI)

...... 47

Figure 3.1. Mean Judgments of Seriousness, by Scandal and Race of Mayor ...... 74

Figure 3.2. Mean Judgment of Punishment, by Experimental Condition and Race of

Participant ...... 81

Figure 4.1. % Party Identification, Experimental Sample ...... 103

Figure 4.2. Mean Judgment of Blame, by Gender Subgroup and Sex of Participant ...... 116

Figure 4.3. Mean Judgment of Punishment, by Gender Subgroups and Sex of Participants

...... 116

Figure 4.4. Mean Feeling Thermometer Score, by Political Party ...... 118

Figure 4.5. Interactive Effects of Sexual Orientation on Trust, by Support for Gay Rights 121

Figure 5.1. Survey on Detroit Mayor and Council Race General Election - Sept. 2013

(Source: The WZYZ-TV Detroit/EPIC-MRA) ...... 136

Figure 5.2. Washington Post D.C. Mayor Poll - March 2014 ...... 138

Figure 5.3. Sun Poll of Likely Baltimore Voters in the Democratic Primary - August 2011 140

xvi

Chapter 1: Introduction

In February of 2012, the popular late-night sketch comedy show, Saturday Night Live

(SNL), aired one of its famous political parodies. On this particular episode, titled “How's

He Doing,” an “unbiased” panel of two African Americans were asked to analyze the potential scenarios that could have an impact on their vote to re-elect Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States. The sketch employed its usual variety of caricatures to critique American politics, but this time poked fun at African American voters. The host noted that the voting bloc’s approval of the president had declined, falling to an exaggerated

99.2 percent.1 The risible scene has its effect; laughter abounds from the audience. “Should the president be worried about the black vote?” asks the host. Then, inquiring further:

“What would it take for Barack Obama to lose your vote?” The panelists dutifully answer with inane retorts to the equally absurd hypotheticals proposed by the host.2 The punch line was simple: regardless of circumstance, and however ridiculous, the black panelists would always support the black president.

If not funny, this particular depiction of a hyper-approving black electorate is provocative. It advances an interesting commentary about how African Americans are perceived to navigate issues of democratic accountability. In particular, the sketch

1 According to Gallup, African Americans were in fact the most approving racial group of Barack Obama; however, the trends were necessarily exaggerated in the SNL skit. 2 E.g., “Would President Obama lose your vote if he repealed healthcare?” “Would he lose your vote if he raised taxes on the middle class?” “Would President Obama lose your vote if he was caught cheating on Michelle?” “[if] President Obama shuts down the Apollo?” 1 perpetuates a prevailing and persistent accusation that, regardless of circumstance, African

Americans will support individuals with whom they share the attribute of race. As evidence, observers often point to high-profile incidents involving prominent African Americans like

O.J. Simpson, Clarence Thomas, Marion Barry and others. Indeed, Russell-Brown (2006) refers to these instances of rally ‘round the flag as “black protectionism,” i.e., a situation in which racial support is extended to prominent blacks [men] accused of wrongdoings. This kind of racial ingroup bias has raised questions in legal settings, with concerns being expressed about whether black jurors would be willing to convict a black defendant (see, e.g.,

Skolnick and Shaw 1997).3

In an experimental study of mock jurors, for example, Sommers and Ellsworth

(2001) found that black participants judged black defendants as being less guilty than white defendants. This extends to real cases, too. For instance, other studies have reported racial differences in response to the O.J. Simpson verdict, with blacks assigning less blame – and more sympathy – to Simpson (Graham et al. 1997). It is not clear if, or the extent to which, such bias is extended to elected officials; political science has been relatively silent on the issues related to black political psychology and behavior outside of the context of traditional inquires into racial and partisan voting. It is reasonable to believe that bias does apply to politicians, however. Hence the concluding question in the SNL skit: What would it take for a black politician to lose the support of the black community? This question of course presupposes that race is politically meaningful, and that race-based considerations are, for better or for worse, a feature of the social and political judgments of African Americans (see

3 The authors of this study refer to this kind of ingroup bias as “black racism,” a term many would find to be contradictory. Further, I do not endorse operationalization of racial bias in this manner because implicit in the term is outgroup derogation, which is not the necessary consequence of ingroup favoritism (Brewer 1999). 2

Dawson 1994). It also assumes that African Americans are in some way different, politically, than other racial groups (see, e.g., Lewis-Beck et al. 2008).

If racial ingroup bias in political judgments are in fact true, then, for some, it raises the specter of a negligible or irresponsible electorate, whereby black transgressors are protected instead of punished. However, ethnocentrism in the behaviors of African

American need not be incompatible with the standards of democratic accountability. Indeed, in rendering political judgments, voters often rely on a variety of psychological processes of which social (racial) categorizations are a part (Tajfel 1981; Tajfel and Turner 1979). Race, then, serves a political function in decision-making, often in the form of a heuristic or cue for group interests (Dawson 1994; see also McConnaughy et al. 2010). It is also important to note that these biases are not unique to African Americans but common among numerical minorities (for a review, see Hewstone et al. 2002), for whom social psychologists have found greater intergroup discrimination than majority groups (Bettencourt et al. 1999;

Leonardelli and Brewer 2001; see also Mullen et al. 1992).4 Still, despite the evidence of intergroup bias in social psychology, few studies in political science have examined ingroup favoritism in this manner. Thus, it is not clear if this bias is extended to same-race politicians, particularly those subject to punishment.

Is there racial ingroup bias in the political judgments of same-race elected officials?

In the sequence of chapters that follow, I attempt to answer this question by experimentally examining how black and white voters judge same-race elected officials following failure events. In particular, I set out to determine the extent to which African Americans (and whites) engage is racial ingroup favoritism toward same-race politicians who violate political

4 In addition to numerical minority, status, relevancy, and salience are also critical factors in intergroup bias. 3 and ethical expectations. I depart from previous research in political science insofar as I do not focus on intergroup bias or outgroup discrimination in the traditional sense; instead, I am concerned with ingroup bias. For example, while the racial politics literature has long focused on white attitudes toward blacks, little is known about how racial groups respond to same-race politicians outside of the context of intergroup competition. In other words, there is a tendency to anchor voter judgments of ingroup politicians by feelings of threat toward the outgroup. This dissertation attempts to reconcile this omission by considering how both black and white participants respond to politicians linked to failure events. The remainder of this chapter is divided in three sections. First, I will provide a brief outline of the general expectations that structure this dissertation. Second, I provide a more specific overview of the empirical strategy pursued in this project, with information on measurement, sample, and analysis. Finally, I conclude with a basic overview of each empirical chapter, and preview some of the experimental findings.

Ingroup Bias: Expectations in Brief

To begin, as a matter of definition, “ingroup bias refers to the systematic tendency to evaluate one’s own membership group (the ingroup), or its members, more favorably than a non-membership group (the outgroup) or its members” (Hewstone et al. 2002, p. 576).

There are two caveats to this conceptualization, however. First, it is important to make clear that ingroup bias is not necessarily accompanied by out-group derogation (for a review, see

Brewer 2001). In other words, the process of ingroup bias is motivated by the desire to promote and maintain positive identities within the ingroup rather than to promote antagonism or hostility towards outgroups (441). Importantly, Weber (1994) offers a more

4 instructive way to think about this bias. In particular, he identifies two distinct functions of ethnocentric attribution bias: protection of the group-esteem versus enhancement of the group- esteem. That is, attributing ingroup negative and outgroup positive behavior to an external cause is an effort to protect the group, whereas attributing ingroup positive and outgroup negative to internal causes is an effort to enhance group-esteem.

The second caveat is equally important. The popular notion of racial bias can be misleading in raising the specter of a negligible or irresponsible electorate. To be biased, for example, is not necessarily the same as absolving same-race elected officials of juridical guilt or political responsibility. Instead, ingroup bias means that there are differential assessments of certain racial groups toward racial ingroup and outgroup members. The bias is suggestive of potential behavior, but does not preclude those biased arbiters from, say, withholding a vote from an underperforming black politician or voting guilty in the trial of an accused ingroup member. For example, in the Skolnick and Shaw (1997) study the black mock jurors assigned to the experimental condition with a black defendant, twenty found the defendant guilty, while thirty-five found him not guilty. Similarly, in the Sommers and Ellsworth (2001) study, black participants judged black defendants as being less guilty than white defendants, which is substantively different than a verdict of not at all guilty.

Taken together, these studies provide some evidence that racial ingroup bias exists among some blacks, but provide qualifying support to suggest that such bias does not render blacks unable to punish. Hence, I argue that blacks, unlike their white counterparts, engage in group-serving biases to protect ingroup elected officials involved in failure events. The ingroup bias explanations of African Americans must be understood within the context and

5 long history of racial discrimination that blacks have faced in general, and their exclusion from political institutions and social and economic opportunities in particular. For instance, beyond the standard social identity explanation, an alternative explanation might focus on outcome dependency. That is, for blacks, the move from protest to politics came to mean that substantive policy outcomes on issues of interest to the community would be contingent on having black representation in governing bodies. Such dependence a black elected officials for positive outcomes likely heightens this ingroup bias, such that they are more reluctant to abandon them.

The Empirical Strategy

The empirical strategy of this project is fairly straightforward. The analyses are based on data drawn from a three experiments, conducted in either a lab or through a population- based survey. These datasets offer a significant advantage over existing data sources. For example, because representative samples reduce the power needed to detect effects for racial minorities, the samples of the following studies are necessarily non-representative. In

Chapters 2 and 3, for example, the proportion of both black and white participants is approximately equal, while in Chapter 4 it is restricted to African Americans (N = 874). In doing this, each study is enriched by an increased sample of African Americans, a subgroup that is typically underrepresented in experimental subject pools.

Empirical analyses that focus on the racial attitudes of African Americans are uncommon, and, thus, the datasets available in political science often lack a sizable black sample. It is equally difficult to find survey or other observational data that is scaled to considers the effects of local level psychology or behavior. The reality of limited data at the

6 local level, coupled with the causal nature of the questions posed in this project, have led me to rely on randomized experiments, a method of growing popularity in political science (see

Druckman et al. 2011). These experiments are designed to examine how black Americans and, to some extent, white Americans, respond to same-race politicians across different failure events. Given the interest here in race and failure events, experiments allow me to explore the effects of things that can be manipulated (Shadish et al. 2002, p. 7). That is, in contrast with survey data, experiments allow us to extract the causal effects of certain interventions or treatments.

In this experimental framework, my task is to manipulate features of the causal relationship of interest. For this reason, each experiment in this dissertation shares the same underlying structure, with the race of a politician (i.e., black or white) and a failure event as the primary factors of interest. For example, in Chapter 2, I manipulate the race of an incumbent mayor, i.e., black or white, and the appraisals of the city he governs, i.e., good or bad. The factors in Chapter 3 are the race of an incumbent mayor, i.e., black or white, and political scandal, i.e., financial misconduct or sexual impropriety. In Chapter 4, I also consider political scandal and vary the subgroup, i.e., gender, and subtypes (e.g., partisanship) to which black elected officials belong. The goal of each of these experiments is to understand how ingroup and out-group politicians are evaluated as a function of any combination of these variables. In other words, by varying the race of an incumbent mayor, I am able to determine if, say, black participants are more or less forgiving of same-race politician

(compared to a white politician) connected to a failure event.

I should take a moment to explain what I mean by failure events, this ambiguous second factor of interest. These are incidents or situations that result in expectancy violations, or “violations of understandings between people in relationships” (Beebe et al.

2010, p. 282).5 Now, at first glance, it may not be clear how municipal performance (Chapter

2) relates at all to ethical transgressions (Chapters 3 and 4), but both represent failure events.

For example, if a voter expects that the employment rate of a local city will improve, or that crime will decline, as a result of electing a particular candidate – and it does not – then the elected official has failed to meet voter expectations. Likewise, if a voter expects an elected official to serve his or her office with the utmost integrity, then the ethical lapses of those politicians will lead to a violation of that behavioral expectation. In some sense, these violations stem from a politicians failure, in the eyes of the voter, to faithfully execute the oath of their office. Having to decide what constitutes a failure event, and how they operate, was a difficult task. Most research on failure events in American politics typically focuses on singular issues, most notably the economy or one particular scandal event. This dissertation takes a decidedly different approach, dividing failure events in a way that permits me to examine voter responses to different situations (i.e., municipal performance and ethical misconduct).

Sample. Few studies in political science have examined ingroup favoritism in the manner that I pursue in this dissertation, and even fewer have featured the attitudes of black voters as the primary issue of concern as it relates to political psychology (but see

Philpot and White 2010). Indeed, Harris-Lacewell (2003) observes that social science research typically treats “black people [as] static object[s] about which white people form

5 To this point, representative democracy implies some formal relationship between voters and their elected officials. 8 opinions” (222). The consequence of this is that African Americans are largely underrepresented in many experimental (and survey) samples, making it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about their political attitudes and behaviors. For this reason, this dissertation oversampled African Americans to understand bias. These are not probability samples, but largely quota samples, and are not representative of the U.S. population. For instance, in Chapter 2, I rely on a convenience sample of undergraduate from two

Midwestern institutions of higher education; one was a historically black college/university and the other a predominately white university. Further, in Chapters 3 and 4 rely on a quota sample provided through Qualtrics Labs to examine issues of bias in scandal.6 Table 1.1 provides a breakdown of the number of observations for each experimental study.

Experiment Obs Experiment 1: Race and Performance 285* Experiment 2: Race and Scandal 971 Experiment 3: Race, Scandal, and Cross-Categorization 874+ Total 2130 Note: Asterisk (*) indicates a convenience sample of students; dagger (+) indicates that sample was restricted African Americans.

Table 1.1. Observations by Experiment

Measurement. Each chapter attempts to measure reactions to failure events in terms of ingroup bias, which is conceptualized as tendency of racial groups to favor ingroup members over out-group members (for a review of ingroup allocation bias, see Bourhis and

Harvey 2010) in political judgments. Importantly, I computed bias by taking the difference in

6 Information about the Qualtrics, or the sampling procedure of its third-party panel provider, is available by request. 9 evaluative attitudes and/or behavior, as indicated by self-report measures, toward ingroup and out-group targets (for a review, see Hewstone et al. 2002). The primary statistical tools are t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA). For our purposes, bias is demonstrated if groups engage in ingroup favoritism, such that groups have more positive evaluations of ingroup members than outgroup members. For example, in Chapter 2, ingroup bias is measured by computing the differences in judgments of accountability between the black incumbent and white incumbent; in Chapters 3 it is measured by taking the differences in trait perceptions, undesirable emotional reactions, and retaliatory punishment following allegations of wrongdoing by a black or white mayor. Using the same measures as Chapter 3,

Chapter 4 captures bias by looking at the those differences between gender subgroups and between partisan-subtypes, and so on.

Overview

First and foremost, this dissertation is interested in the degree of racial ingroup bias, mostly among African Americans, following failure events. The project is divided into three empirical chapters, each using experimental methods to examine racial bias in sanctioning across different failure contexts. For example, the first chapter focuses on the effects that the race of an incumbent (and candidate) and municipal condition can have on political judgments of accountability. The second empirical chapter focuses on group-based (race) bias in evaluations of an elected official following allegations of sexual or financial misconduct, and considers the effectiveness of different accounts politicians use to reduce penalty. Last, the final empirical chapter extends the focus of wrongdoing in the previous chapter and focuses on how group heterogeneity, or the cross-categorization of elected

10 officials, works to the benefit or disadvantage same-race politicians accused of a financial misdeed.

Initially, the first empirical chapter was designed to be an exclusive examination of whether, or the extent to which, African Americans engage in racial crossover voting in municipal elections. Its goal was to model the circumstances, experimentally, that undergirded the success of white mayoral candidates in majority-black cities like Gary (IN),

Baltimore (MD), New Orleans (LA), and, during the writing of this project, Detroit (MI). I reasoned that in situations in which blacks became dissatisfied with the urban services of distressed cities, they would become more likely to vote retrospectively (Nelson and Meranto

1977), abandon racial loyalty, and support white candidates. The findings in Chapter 2 make this point, but with modest support. Indeed, white candidates do see a bump in support among black participants in the condition in which a black incumbent governs a poorly performing city. Even so, there was still overwhelming support, across conditions, for black politicians. This led me to reconsider the original proposition, which is now the second part of the chapter, and to focus, instead, on group-based bias in judgments of accountability.

Thus, the first part of the chapter explores the extent to which appraisals of blame and responsibility are discounted for same-race politicians. The findings reveal undeniable racial differences in how accountability is assessed by blacks and whites, which may help to explain the sometimes-long lifespan of some black mayoralties, despite economic and social distress.

The second empirical chapter is different than the first, in that it focuses on the alleged misconduct of politicians. The goal here is to draw on a failure event that signaled a more egregious violation of social norms, and to focus on an event for which there were

11 clearer legal, moral, or political consequences. In that regard, scandals are especially appropriate, because they are linked to deviant behavior that is regulated by ethical expectations. Moreover, unlike the policy or performance failures of Chapter 2, scandals are within a politicians’ locus of control. In other words, if a natural disaster cripples a local economy, it is beyond the control of any elected official; if an elected official takes bribes or misuses governments funds, it is more difficult for an elected official to diffuse responsibility for their conduct. Indeed, in this chapter I demonstrate that wrongdoings do in fact have a different effect on black and white politicians, with black participants being more favorable to ingroup politicians than white participants in trait perceptions, undesirable emotional reactions, judgments of accountability, and retaliatory punishment. In part two of Chapter 3,

I extend this analysis to examine the effectiveness of different account strategies at mitigating negative judgments. In particular, I analyze the effects of politicians offering no comment, a denial, or a counter claims of racism.

Finally, drawing on the scandal framework used in the aforementioned study, the last empirical chapter examines how subgrouping or subtyping black elected officials affects political judgments. This is important because, although I apply important ideas from social identity theory to make causal claims about how racial groups respond to embattled ingroup members, the previous chapters only account for ingroup favoritism toward what might be considered the prototypical (or, stereotypical) black politician, i.e., one who is black, straight, male, and Democrat. This approach ignores the experiences of black elected officials – and candidates – whose identities are thought to be subordinate to (e.g., women) – or perceptually inconsistent with (e.g., Republican) – the global racial category (i.e., black). It is

12 indeed presumptuous to assume that black women, for example, experience the same kind of support that is received by their black male counterparts. Therefore, Chapter 4 is designed to examine intragroup bias in the context of subgroups (e.g., black women) and subtypes

(e.g., black republicans; gays and lesbians). In other words, the goal is to understand the extent to which African Americans discriminate against ingroup members who have stereotype disconfirming identity attributes.

References

Abrams, Dominic. “Subjective Group Dynamics.” In Encyclopedia of Group Processes & Intergroup Relationships, edited by John M. Levine and Michael A. Hogg. Los Angeles: Sage, 2010.

Beebe, Steven A., Susan J. Beebe, Mark V. Redmond. Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others, Pearson, 2010.

Bettencourt, B. Ann., Norman Miller, and Deborah Hume. “Effects of Numerical Representation within Cooperative Settings: Examining the Role of Salience in Ingroup Favoritism.” British Journal of Social Psychology 38 (1999): 265-285.

Bourhis, Richard Y., and Simon-Pierre Harvey. “Ingroup Allocation Bias.” In Encyclopedia of Group Processes & Intergroup Relationships, edited by John M. Levine and Michael A. Hogg. Los Angeles: Sage, 2010.

Brewer, Marilynn. “The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love or Outgroup Hate?” Journal of Social Issues 55 (1999): 429-444.

Dawson, Michael. Behind the Mule: Race and Class in American Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Druckman, James N., Donald, James H. Kuklinski, Arthur Lupia. “Experimentation in Political Science.” In Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science, edited by James N. Druckman, Donald P. Green, James H. Kulinksi, and Arthur Lupia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Fiorina, Morris P. Retrospective Voting in American National Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.

Graham, Sandra, Bernard Weiner, and Gail Sahar Zucker. “An Attributional Analysis of Punishment Goals and Public Reactions to O.J. Simpson.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23 (1997): 331-346.

Harris-Lacewell, Melissa V. “The Heart of the Politics of Race: Center Black People in the Study of White Racial Attitudes.” Journal of Black Studies 34 (2003): 222-249.

Hewstone, Miles, Mark Rubin, and Hazel Willis. “Intergroup Bias.” Annual Review of Psychology 53 (2002): 575-604.

Key, V.O. Responsible Electorate: Rationality in Presidential Voting (1936-1960). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966.

Lewis-Beck, Michael S., William G. Jacoby, Helmut Norpoth, and Herbert F. Weisberg. The American Voter Revisited. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2008.

Leonardelli, Geoffrey, and Marilynn B. Brewer. “Minority and Majority Discrimination: When and Why.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 37 (2001): 468-485.

Marques, Jose M. “Black Sheep Effect.” In Encyclopedia of Group Processes & Intergroup Relationships, edited by John M. Levine and Michael A. Hogg. Los Angeles: Sage, 2010.

McConnaughy, Corrine M., Ismail K. White, David L. Leal, Jason P. Cesellas. “A Latino on the Ballot: Explaining Coethnic Voting Among Latinos and the Response of White Americans.” The Journal of Politics 72 (2010): 1-13.

Mullen, Brian, Rupert Brown, and Colleen Smith. “Ingroup bias as a function of salience, relevance, and status: An Integration.” European Journal of Social Psychology 22 (1992): 103-122.

Nelson, William, and Philip J. Meranto. Electing Black Mayors: Political Action in the Black Community. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1977.

Philpot, Tasha S., and Ismail K. White, Eds. African-American Political Psychology: Identity, Opinion, and Action in the Post-Civil Rights Era. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Russell-Brown, Katheryn. Protecting Our Own: Race, Crime, and African Americans. Lanham (MD): Roman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.

Shadish, William, Thomas D. Cook, and Donald Campbell. Experimental and Quasi- Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.

Skolnick, Paul, and Jerry I. Shaw. “The O.J. Simpson Criminal Trial Verdict: Racism or Status Shield?” Journal of Social Issues 53 (1997): 503-516.

Sommers, Samuel R., Phoebe C. Ellsworth. “Race in the Courtroom: Perceptions of Guilt and Dispositional Attributions.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 26 (2000): 1367-1379.

Tajfel, Henri. Human Groups & Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Tajfel, Henri, and J.C. Turner. An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict. In W.G. Austuing and S. Worchel, Eds. In The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole, 1979.

Weber, Joseph G. “The Nature of Ethnocentric Bias: Ingroup Protection of Enhancement?” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 30 (1994): 482-504.

Chapter 2: Race, Performance, and Bias

It had been almost thirty years since the city of Gary, Indiana, had a white mayor when Scott L. King, a white democrat, was elected to the majority-black city that made history with the election of Richard G. Hatcher in 1967.7 In the time between then and when

King assumed office in 1996, Indiana’s steel town had fallen into a new depression, crippled by an eroded tax base and overwhelming social and economic dysfunction.8 King, it seemed, was the answer to the downward spiral that occurred under the leadership of the city’s black elected officials.9 To be sure, black voters anticipated that there would be better times under

Hatcher, who became the first African American to lead a major American city. However, the excitement and expectations that accompanied racial representation would eventually be overshadowed by disappointment over the city’s fiscal constraints. After twenty years in office, Hatcher was defeated for reelection by Thomas V. Barnes, the last black mayor before the ascendance of Scott L. King.

The story of Gary, Indiana can be told in many ways. One account regarding the election of King was that “…voters were not as concerned about preserving black political

7 Richard G. Hatcher (Gary, Ind.) and Carl Stokes (Cleveland, OH) were both elected in 1967 to become the first African American mayors of major American cities. 8 In 1994, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Gary had an unemployment rate of 13 percent. In the same year it had a violent crime rate of 2,357 per 100,000 people (Unified Crime Report). 9 The election of Richard G. Hatcher marks a dramatic shift in the fortune of the city; although white flight was already well underway, his tenure seemed to accelerate the process. 17

leadership as they were with turning their city around.”10 The theme during that election cycle seemed to be universal, regardless of the varying sentiments among factions of voters.

Indeed, it was plain: the next mayor was going to be white in a city that was not. Many worried that the racial transition that occurred in Gary would spillover into similarly distressed cities.11 It was thought that black incumbents (and candidates) would be punished

(Key 1967) for the retrospective evaluations (Fiorina 1981) that voters would make, and that the public’s confidence in the incumbent’s ability, and the city’s capacity to sustain services, would be forever damaged. It could not be ignored that it was “…blacks’ quest for results over racial allegiance,” wrote Bob Minzesheimer, “[that helped] Gary, Ind., …become one of the first overwhelmingly black cities to elect a white mayor.”12

The purported consequences of big city woes for black mayors seemed inevitable.

Yet, it seems that few cities actually followed Gary’s lead in changing the race of its mayor, even though the problems that majority-black municipalities faced had not dissipated. Nor had the number of black executives inheriting these ‘hollow prizes’ declined.13 How, then, can we explain the racial transition that happened in Gary and the few other cities that would eventually follow? In contrast, how might we explain the breakdown of the reward- punishment model of electoral politics in the twenty-eight years that preceded the transition?

Is there a difference in how black voters judge same-race incumbents? Is there a point at

10 Wayne Washington, “A Test for Black Leaders: Big City woes May Create Backlash. Mayors fear voters will lose confidence in their abilities,” Star Tribune, 6 May 1996, 7A. 11 The anxiety over racial transition was such that, Thomas V. Barnes, then incumbent mayor of Gary, made an explicit racial appeal for black solidarity, encouraging black voters to support an independent black candidate over Scott King. Barnes was not seeking reelection. 12 Bob Minzesheimer, “For black voters in Gary, Ind., ‘getting results’ is what counts,” USA Today, 9 November 1995, 5A. 13 Black mayors came to power in American cities at a time in which cities were experiencing considerable decline, therefore Friesema 1969 referred to them as a “hollow prize.” 18

which the likelihood of racial crossover voting tips in favor of white candidates? Answering the question with any precision is difficult, especially given the wide variation on a host of variables (e.g., demographics, partisanship, number of candidates) at play in a local election.

Nevertheless, a good starting point might focus on how blacks assign political accountability.

To be sure, traditional theories of retrospective and economic voting assume that incumbents and candidate will shoulder the full burden of consequences from poor performance. For example, the fiscal and social health of a city becomes the metric by which electoral rewards and punishment are distributed.

Citizens hold mayors accountable for a variety of issues, including those that are beyond the reach of City Hall. But how does race matter? Is it possible that black and white voters evaluate accountability differently, depending on the race of the incumbent? This study explores the effects of incumbent race and municipal condition on political judgments.

In particular, it uses experimental data to examine whether there is a racial difference in how accountability is assigned to an incumbent mayor in a struggling city, and whether that poor performance has any effect on how new candidates are later perceived during a fictionalized, local election. I begin by asking whether blacks discount their judgments of blame and responsibility in favor of same-race politicians, and then consider what circumstances might increase the likelihood of blacks engaging in racial crossover voting for a white candidate.

Individually, each of these questions interrogates the oft-ignored psychological foundations that underscore local-level political behavior. Together, they attempt to address a set of questions regarding the breakdown of retrospective voting in underperforming, majority- black cities on the one hand, and the consequence it has on black political power when it is maintained on the other. 19

Community Satisfaction

A major source of dissatisfaction among African Americans appears to be the communities in which they live. According to a study conducted by the Pew Research

Center (2008), one-in-five African Americans express some level of dissatisfaction with their communities.14 The lack of good paying jobs ranked high (58%) among the concerns that blacks had about their local community, with concerns about crime (46%) and students dropping out of high school (46%) following closely behind. Further, evidence from Howell and Perry (2004) finds that blacks who live in a majority-black city, with a black mayor, are significantly more dissatisfied with their communities than blacks living in majority-white cities, with a white mayor. And, as Arnold and Carnes (2012) demonstrate, fluctuations in crime and economy have serious consequences for mayoral approval across race and time

(see also Howell 2007). Central to these community cognitions are concerns regarding municipal performance on anything from simple service delivery (e.g., snow removal) to complex economic issues like unemployment. Even where mayoral power is limited, citizens ultimately see mayors as being the arbiters of local conditions.

Accordingly, performance-based approval has become the standard for understanding reward and punishment, and for good reason. Approval or disapproval of an incumbent can signal voters’ intent to support the incumbent or not in the next election.

The difficulty with (mayoral) approval, however, is that it has been treated as a proxy for judgments of accountability, i.e., judgments about who is responsible for a particular

14 “Blacks See Growing Values Gap Between Poor and Middle Class: Optimism about Black Progress Declines” Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C. (November 13th, 2007). http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2007/11/13/blacks-see-growing-values-gap-between-poor-and-middle- class/, accessed on September 10th, 2013. 20

outcome. This is an important distinction because the anatomy of political accountability is constructed around voters’ belief that the job of elected officials is to respond, treat, and alleviate public problems (Peffley 1984; Hamilton 1978; see also Iyengar 1989). In that regard, measuring approval, while useful, may be confounded or too ambiguous to neatly capture these more nuanced evaluations of role responsibility.

Accountability

How voters think about accountability, and, to a greater extent, whom voters believe is answerable for a city’s negative performance may be more critical than approval in determining how reward and punishment are distributed. If one accept this notion of role responsibility (Peffley 1984), then Nelson and Meranto (1978, 341) were right to suggest that blacks that were once supportive of black mayors would eventually withdraw their support if they grew disappointed with the city’s lack of progress. From the data on community satisfaction above, it seems as if African Americans who live in majority-black cities are among a disaffected cohort of residents, meaning they should abandon their support for elected officials. This seemed to be the case in Gary, Indiana, and is wholly consistent with what we might expect from retrospective voting (Fiorina 1981). However, it is worth repeating that Richard G. Hatcher was the mayor of Gary for twenty years before being unseated by Thomas V. Barnes in 1987. In fact, many critics pointed to Hatcher as being to blame for the city’s rapid downward spiral (Smith 2008), a fate from which it has yet to fully recover.15

15 According to the U.S. Census, between the years 2007 and 2011, approximately 36 percent of residents in Gary lived below the poverty line. 21

How did voters judge Hatcher? Is it possible that racial loyalty, inspired by the political euphoria (see, e.g., Philpot et al. 2010 for a discussion on group-based emotions) of his being elected the first black mayor, protected him against punishment in the electoral arena? Indeed, if we consider that areas with high levels of black political incorporation have historically facilitated greater political engagement (Bobo and Gilliam 1990; cf. Spence and

McClerking 2009; 2010) and trust in government among blacks (Howell and Fagan 1988;

Abney and Hutcheson 1981; see also Marschall and Shah 2007), then it is not difficult to see how this explanation may be plausible. The power of racial group identification on political behavior (Tate 1993; Philpot and White 2009; Philpot and Walton 2010) is such that group- based considerations might have held the fleeting support of Hatcher at bay (see Hirschman

1971 for a discussion on exit and loyalty).

However, according to Susan Howell and her colleagues, black mayors are judged less on the basis of their race and more on their performance in dealing with city services, such as crime, housing, and public schools. Still, they acknowledge that the role of race is not trivial. For example, Howell and McLean (2001) suggest that high levels of racial identification among African Americans can create a situation in which black mayors are inoculated against the effects of an underperforming city. This was perhaps the case for C.

Ray Nagin, former mayor of the city of New Orleans. Nagin, an African American, was the city’s executive during Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters to hit an

American city. There is little disagreement that preparation for, and recovery after, the storm was mismanaged at every level of government. However, to some, the burden of responsibility was the mayor’s alone; it was Nagin that was responsible for the city’s (failed) evacuation and other preparedness measures. To others, the blame belonged to the federal 22

emergency management agency (FEMA) for failing to coordinate a timely relief effort to deal with the crisis on the ground.

Racial Assignment Bias

In the end, Lay (2009) finds that voters did not blame Nagin for Katrina, and therefore saw little reason to punish him for the events that had occurred there. He subsequently won his bid for re-election with 52 percent of the vote. It is worth nothing that his opponent, Mitch Landrieu, a white democrat, would eventually capture 63 percent of the vote in New Orleans in 2010, making him the first white mayor of the city since his father,

Moon Landrieu, in 1978.

In some sense, New Orleans shares the same story as Gary, Indiana. They each maintained black political leadership in spite of social and economic adversity; they both transitioned to white mayors after an unknown tipping point, one undoubtedly marked by the city’s underperformance. In considering the first point, could it be that citizens might ignore or discount the political failures of elected officials simply because they share a salient identity? This answer is complicated, but research on attribution theory and ingroup allocation bias (Tajfel and Turner 1979; see Bourhis and Harvey 2010 or Hewstone 2002 for a review) may provide an explanation as to why black incumbents may be reprieved in the face of poor performance.

These biases are not necessarily deliberate or conscious, nor are they really about the racial identity itself but about what that identity represents in relevant political spaces.

Indeed, these cognitive biases exist across contexts and are motivated by group members wanting to either protect or enhance their ingroup (see, e.g., Weber 1994). The mechanism 23

that is often responsible for this kind of sorting is called ethnocentric attribution, which is the process by which members of different social groups assign biased, causal stories to explain the behavior of their own group and that of other social groups (Turner and

Hewstone 2010). In short, positive outcomes or behaviors for the ingroup are attributed to inherent, personal traits, while negative outcomes and behavior are the function of external factors. In contrast, positive outcomes for outgroups are the result of external factors, while negative outcomes and behaviors are the function of inherent, personal traits (Hewstone

1990).

Given the circumstances of American cities throughout the second half of the twentieth century, it is not difficult to see how external factors (e.g., white flight) could have limited the capacity of black mayors. With this in mind, ethnocentric attribution bias seems to be the most appropriate in explaining this behavior. Even if that were not the case, ingroup bias is structured in a way that privileges ingroup members with the benefit of the doubt, a courtesy not extended to members of outgroups (see Brewer 2003). For example, following the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina, embittered partisans began to point fingers at each other, alleging that members of one party were more culpable for the poor response to the storm than the other (Malhotra and Kuo 2008; see also Forgette et al. 2008).

And, for the voters who were less sophisticated (Gomez and Wilson 2006), or who had a rather limited understanding of the role of each government actor in the response to the storm (Areceneux and Stein 2006), ethnocentric attribution bias proved convenient in the assigning of accountability for distressing political events.16

16 Note that I adopt Weiner’s (1995) use of assignment over attribution. In general, attribution should be reserved for explaining behavior, whereas assignment relates to evaluations based on that behavior. 24

Racial Crossover Voting

There is considerable evidence to suggest that intergroup biases are more prevalent among minority groups because their size and status makes group identity more salient

(Mullen et al. 1992; Bettencourt et al. 1999; Leonardelli and Brewer 2001).17 This should come as no surprise for a disaffected group like African Americans, who have less political power than do whites (Abramson 1983) and who continue to experience group-based distrust for a government that is believed to perpetuate institutional racism in the laws it enacts. Further, the persistence of (racial) conflict (Kauffmann 2004), threat (Levine and

Mooreland 2002), and antagonistic policies encourage blacks to remain group-centered in their politics (Dawson 1991; Tate 1993).

The election of Richard G. Hatcher in Gary and Carl Stokes in Cleveland in 1967 was a turning point, whereby blacks had become political incorporated and empowered in some of the largest American cities (see Browning, Marshall and Tabb 2003; Clark and

Morrison 1995; Nelson and Meranto 1977). This became the standard order of electoral politics in most majority-black cities (Pinderhughes 2003), even in those cities with slight majorities. However, even with a growing number of black elected officials, many mayors could not guard against the setbacks of urban decay. To this point, much of the work on racial representation has focused on the substantive impact of black elected officials. It has focused less on black support for white candidates, in part because African Americans have not traditionally harbored the same reluctance regarding cross race voting as whites (see

Citrin et al. 1990; Sigelman et al. 1995; Hajnal 2001). In the words, black crossover voting is

17 Brewer (2003) notes that, “if majority members are less identified with the ingroup, they have little basis for ingroup bias” (55). 25

neither novel nor surprising. African Americans are loyal Democrats, and have had a consistent history of supporting white liberal candidates (sometimes over black candidates).18

These incidents of black crossover voting almost always happen outside of the majority- minority context, however. Thus, it is not clear how white (mayoral) candidates would fare in majority-black cities with strong traditions of black political leadership. It has been argued that having more than one black candidate on the ballot can split the black vote in a way that gives an advantage to a white candidate (Cannon 1999). A cohesive white minority,

Mollenkopf (2003) reasons, can then influence the race in their favor. 19

The vote splitting hypothesis is compelling and, in some ways, consistent with what happened in Gary, New Orleans, and even Baltimore. Each is a majority-black city, which at some point held a primary that featured multiple black candidates, and a white candidate who won. The other factors involved in electoral decisions notwithstanding, vote splitting is indeed a plausible explanation for how whites win in majority-black contexts. It is also too simple, treating local elections as a zero-sum game, where the gains or losses of black votes benefit or hurt black candidates alone. It thus fails to account for the possibility that some

African Americans may have willfully voted for the white candidate. This seemed true in

Gary, where it was observed that “…thousands of African Americans, weary of the city’s crime and poverty, voted for [Scott] King because of his race, not despite it.”20 A reasonable concession is that the proportion of blacks supporting the white candidate may be relatively small compared to those supporting one of the other black candidates. The existence of the

18 In 2008, Hillary Clinton benefitted from the strong support of some in the black community, even members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). 19 In general, it argued that the presence of two black candidates in a primary election effectively divide the black vote in a way that advantages white candidates. 20 Peter Kendal, “Gary’s Black Citizens Appear Ready for a Change: Old Steel Town Willing to Trust a White Mayor,” Chicago Tribute, 9 November 1995. 26

support, however, regardless of its size, is no less important, especially when the candidate wins.

Therefore, I contend that, beyond vote splitting, there is a tipping point beyond which blacks become more likely to support a white candidate. Although I do not have direct evidence of a threshold effect, there does appears to be, at least anecdotally, conditions under which racial transition can be encouraged (see Bullock 1984). In general, it is relative to how poorly a city is performing on relevant social or economic dimension, with the latter being the principal concern in most political science research. It should go without saying that this threshold is quite high. In fact, the extent to which loyalty hold racial crossover voting at bay is perhaps best evidenced by the long reign of black political leadership in many American cities.

Method

To test the effects of incumbent race and municipal condition on political judgments, two hundred and eighty-five students from two Midwestern universities were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions, reflecting a 2 (race of incumbent) x 2 (condition of city) factorial design.21 Since the goal of this study is to understand ingroup loyalty, the experiment is designed to observe of how participants respond to both (1) incumbents and (2) candidates of the same – or different – race. It is important to note that the latter item is, by design, vulnerable to the carryover effects of the treatment. In other words, the goal of the candidate portion of this experiment is to capture the effect that both manipulated factors might have on a participants’ preference for future political leaders.

21 See Druckman and Kam (2011) for a discussion of student samples in experiments. 27

Participants

Two hundred and eighty-five students from two Midwestern universities, one a predominately white institution (PWI) and the other a historically black college/university

(HBCU), were recruited to participate in this study. Table 2.1 describes select demographic characteristics by the environment in which the study was conducted. Approximately 80 percent of the African American participants completed the study in a mobile lab embedded in a majority-black environment, while others did so in a computer lab at the PWI.22

22 Majority-black refers to a cultural setting in which the lion’s share of participants identified as African American. 28

Study Sample Size (n=285) PWI HBCU Percent Percent Observations (n) 141 144 Race African American 25% 100% White American 75% 0

Sex Male 69% 69% Female 31% 31%

Age (18-29) 94% 99%

Party Identification Strong Democrat 11% 6% Democrat 29% 60% Independent 31% 28% Republican 21% 6% Strong Republican 7% < 1%

Note: Entries are rounded to the nearest whole number.

Table 2.1. Demographic Characteristics of Sample

Each participant in the study received some varying compensation for partaking in the study; in some cases they received extra course credit, while in others they received $5 cash or a $10 gift card. Varying the incentive structure was necessary to attract more black participants, as they were largely underrepresented in the PWI pool.23

Procedure

First, participants were instructed to respond to questions as if they resided in a hypothetical city named Aurora, and to make corresponding judgments from that perspective. Following these instructions, subjects were then introduced to a fabricated booster brochure of the city, which offered a welcome from the incumbent mayor, pictures of members of the city council (and mayor), and the city’s demographic data (e.g., described as being majority-black in percentage terms) (Appendix A).24 To satisfy the first factor (i.e., race of incumbent), the brochure varied the race of the incumbent mayor as either black or white, while the racial composition of the council was always presented as being predominately black. The latter is done so to demonstrate that blacks can – and do – win in municipal elections in the city of Aurora, an important condition for black political empowerment.

Next, participants were exposed to an e-document that served as a report card for the performance of the city, which was varied across three key dimensions: education, crime, and the economy. For example, a letter grade was assigned to Aurora for each issue, by a

23 There is no evidence to suggest that differences in the incentive structure compromised the data; see Dickson (2011, pp. 61-65) for commentary about the scale of monetary incentives. 24 Bledsoe et al. (1995) suggest that a more homogenous racial context among blacks increases their racial solidarity, while Hoston (2007) finds solidarity among blacks to be highest when blacks are in majority- white contexts. 30

corresponding federal agency (e.g., education was evaluated by U.S. Department of

Education), which evaluated the city in terms that suggested that it was performing well or poorly in those particular areas (Appendix B). In addition, as a way to reinforce the report card, participants were also shown a corresponding video ad for the city; it portrayed Aurora as either an ominous or a promising place to live.25

Together, the city condition treatments work to produce a response consistent with the concern expressed by urban residents.26 More specifically, the benefit of including these issues as a part of the manipulation is that they provide an accounting of real world problems that have been identified as a source of (dis)satisfaction within cities in general

(Pew Center 2008, p. 8), and within the black community in particular. To measure community evaluation, a scale was created based on participants’ answers to four survey questions about their evaluations of the hypothetical city, Aurora (α = .94). To begin, they were asked to rate their overall evaluation of Aurora as a place to live, then to do the same with specific aspects of the community: education (Berry and Howell 2007), the economy

(Rudolph 2003), and crime (Howell and Marshall 1998). Their answer was scored 5 if they evaluated the community as “excellent”, 4 if they said it was “very good”, 3 if they rated it

“good”, 2 if they said it was “fair,” and 1 if they rated it as “poor.” These responses were then standardized on scale from 0-1.

25 Both videos can be provided by request to the author. 26 The treatments were designed to work in concert, so concerns regarding which manipulation is doing the work, are mitigated by the fact that they work in the same direction to produced valenced feelings toward the attitude object. 31

I will begin by considering the impact of the race of the incumbent mayor and the city conditions on evaluations of the city and incumbent accountability. I then turn to evaluations of the candidates for mayor.

The Incumbent

A hallmark feature of the United States’ democratic-republic is that voters are vested with the power to reward or punish elected officials for policy outcomes. This means that politicians who do not perform well on any variety of issues important to their constituent are subject to a process of democratic accountability, primarily through elections. As the logic goes, those elected officials who best serve the interest of their constituents are reelected, while those who do not are replaced.27

Howell and McLean (2001) find that race is a non-trivial factor in the process of evaluating black mayors. Highly identified black voters can, and sometimes do, embrace racial (political) loyalty in a way that inoculates black mayors against the consequences of negative city conditions (334). This of course runs contrary to the expectations of a reward- punishment model of electoral politics. This should not be taken to mean that black incumbents are absolved of their role in managing urban municipalities, however. Indeed, evaluations of a community’s performance matter, if not more than race, in explaining the approval of both black and white mayors (Howell and Perry 2004; Howell 2007). But, still, the politics of dissatisfaction are unmistakably filtered by race, which should, in theory, make judgments of accountability more consequential than approval during the democratic process. If

27 Black mayors throughout history have faced considerable financial constraints that have limited their governing capacities; as a result, dissatisfaction among citizens is higher relative to those living under a white mayor. 32

there is a failure to act, however, voters assign blame and responsibility among political actors, as they attempt to find who is answerable for the occurrence (Shaver 1985).

To measure accountability, a scale was created based on participants’ answers to eight survey questions about the extent to which they assigned (4) blame or (4) responsibility to the incumbent mayor for the municipality’s condition(s).28 Their answer was recorded as 1 if they evaluated the incumbent as “not at all deserving of blame/not at all responsible”, and up to 5 if they rated him as “deserving a greater deal of blame/completely responsible.”

And, while assignment of blame and responsibility can be affectively and conceptually different (Weiner 1995), they are significantly correlated in these data, r =.53, p = .00, and do well as a composite measure of accountability (α =.73).

Hypotheses

The following hypotheses are drawn from the earlier discussion of ethnocentric attributions, specifically the incidents in which ingroup members were less likely to be held accountable for their failures relative to members of the out-group. Therefore, I expect that:

• Hypothesis 1: African Americans will assign less accountability to the black incumbent compared to the white incumbent.

It is reasonable to assume that this kind of ingroup favoritism would be relatively uniform across race. However, I suspect that it is not true of the participants who belong to the majority race, in part because they are able to easily replace underperforming, same-race politicians. Therefore, I also expect that:

28 These questions were then repeated for the individual issue items as well (i.e., crime, education, economy), and included in an additive scale (α = .79 for blame and α =. 78 for responsibility, respectively). 33

• Hypothesis 2: There will be no difference in the amount of accountability that white participants assign to the black and white incumbent. Results

Measuring neighborhood satisfaction in survey research on approval is critical to understanding local-level political judgments. However, because I am using an experiment to manipulate feelings about a fictional community, a manipulation check to determine whether the treatments operated in the expected direction is of first order. Recall that the treatments were designed to induce either satisfaction or dissatisfaction with regard to the quality of the fictitious city, Aurora.

0.79 Black Participants White Participants0.74 0.68 0.68

0.23 0.18 0.12 0.07

Black Incumbent, Good Black Incumbent, Bad White Incumbent, Good White Incumbent, Bad City City City City

Figure 2.1. Mean Community Evaluation, by Condition and Race

The results are displayed in Figure 2.1. Overall, the treatments produced the appropriate outcome, with negative evaluations conditioned by the negative treatment. A three-way analysis of variance (condition of city x race of incumbent x race of participant)

yielded the expected main effect for the condition of the city, F(1, 265) = 722, p =.0000,

η2=.71, indicating that the treatments worked to produce evaluations in the expected direction. The main effect for race of incumbent was only marginally significant, F (1,265) =

3.62, p=. 058, suggesting that satisfaction was highest among those in the black incumbent condition. The race of the participant was non-significant, F(1, 265) = 0.18, p >.05. Further, there was a significant interaction effect between the condition of the city and race of the participant, such that black participants in the negative city condition evaluated the city more favorably (M=. 20, SD=. 17) than did white participants (M=. 10, SD=. 11), F (1, 265) =

21.3, p =. 0000, η2=. 02.

Incumbent Accountability

Judgments of accountability were subjected to a similar three-way factorial analysis of variance, with two levels for the city’s condition, two levels for the race of the mayor, and two levels for the race of the participant. The main effect for the condition of the city yielded an F ratio of F(1, 244)=4.96, p <.05, η2 = .02, indicating that the mean scores for accountability were higher in the negative city condition than the positive city condition. All interaction effects were non-significant. Because municipal condition was significant, t-tests were used to make additional comparisons.

Table 2.2 summarizes the assignment of accountability by each racial group. The data are restricted to only two of the four experimental conditions, however. In particular, the following analyses focus exclusively on the racial differences in the negative city conditions.

This is done, in part, because judgments of accountability do not generally include the benefits of credit taking but instead focus on who is answerable (i.e., blameworthy or 35

responsible) for negative events. What’s more, attributions of blame are conceptually and practically negative, while judgments of responsibility are affectively neutral (Weiner 1995) and can be applied to either positive or negative situations. Thus, focusing on negative performance alone simplifies the goals of the analysis, and also ensures that both blame and responsibility (r = .58) have negative valence.29

Black White Black Incumbent, City .55 .61 White Incumbent, City .65 .60 Difference .10* .01 Note: Entries are standardized means scaled so that 0 reflects ‘low accountability’ and 1 ‘high accountability.’ + p<.10, *p<.05, **, p<.01, ***p<.001.

Table 2.2. Mean Assignment of Accountability, by Race of Participant and Negative Experimental Condition

In general, and consistent with the first hypothesis, the results presented in Table 2.2 confirm that there is a racial difference in how accountability is assigned. Black participants, in particular, discount the assignment of accountability of black incumbents (M=.55) of a poorly performing city compared to a similarly situated white incumbent (M=.65). In other words, they find the white incumbent mayor to be, on average, more culpable for the condition of the city, t(80), = 2.72, p = .00, than the black incumbent mayor. The experimental manipulation did not invoke similar racialized assignments among white participants, however.

29 That is, blame and responsibility will correspond to the negative event, because blame does not have positive valence. 36

Issue Blame

To further illustrate this point, I consider the policy domains that make up the accountability measure and compare the mean difference in how blame is assigned to each incumbent in the negative conditions. By unpacking accountability to just focus on blame, the racial differences in assignment become more apparent because of blame’s negative valence. Moreover, separating out the issues is a more realistic expression of how incumbents are assessed, and may also reveal some nuance to how particular issues are framed in the minds of urban voters. Figure 2.2 displays these data, such that negative values indicate less blame for the black incumbent and positive values indicate greater assignment of blame to him.

Black Participants White Participants 0.08

0.02 0

-0.01

-0.10* -0.11* Education Economy Crime Education Economy Crime

Figure 2.2. Differences in Blame Assignment in Negative Condition, by Race of Participant and Policy Issue

As expected, there are significant differences in how blame is assigned by relevant policy issues; however, this again is only true of black participants. Among white participants, that is, assignment of blame did not differ as a function of the race of the incumbent for each issue.30 But, for black participants, black incumbents are blamed less for the failures in dealing with education (p = .03) and the economy (p = .02) than the white incumbent. This is not true of blame assignments for crime, however. The former two may be explained by blacks’ general distrust of social and political systems, which has developed over a period of time in response to events like segregation or the persistence discrimination in the labor market. Crime, on the other hand, may not be perceived as being the result of systematic discrimination, which might explain the limited difference in blame.

The Candidate

The dynamics of electoral politics are most commonly understood in terms of judgments toward political candidates. To this point, a second component of this experiment draws on this tradition to observe the carryover effects of the treatments on candidate evaluations. In considering the theoretical framework described earlier, it is reasonable to expect that race and circumstance will structure perceptions about candidates in meaningful ways. Municipal conditions, for instance, as well as race of the incumbent, are important to how local voters come to think about candidates.

Indeed, these evaluations of cities and their incumbents can be either retrospective

(Key 1968, p. 61) or prospective (Downs 1958, p. 39) in their orientation. Negative reviews of urban services, for instance, likely diminish confidence in same-race elected officials

30 Although the mean for crime is higher for the black incumbent, the difference is not significant, and is likely attributed to unequal sample size. 38

overtime (Nelson and Meranto 1971) while thinking about the future of the city might compel a voter’s sense of racial loyalty. Whatever the case, these evaluations are important to how voters perceive candidates, especially in situations where there is the threat of disruption to the status quo of racial politics.

The earlier case of Gary (IN) is an instructive example of disruption. There, black voters became increasingly dissatisfied with the way in which [black] political leadership handled the city’s crisis, which effectively minimized (for some) the anxiety of a racial transition in City Hall.31 It is difficult to determine whether Gary is unique in this sense, or whether other racial transitions have occurred with similar levels of support among black voters.32 What does seem clear, however, is that many majority-black cities do maintain continuity in black political leadership in spite of the city’s struggles.

Are black voters simply more likely to prefer same-race politicians (Sullivan 2010; see also McConnaughy et al. 2010)? Are same-race candidates punished for – or suffer from – the perceived failures of a same-race incumbent (e.g., high unemployment)? If so, under what circumstances might that support be diminished? Or, put differently, when might blacks engage in racial crossover in voting for a white candidate? To determine the effects of the treatments on candidate evaluations, participants were introduced to two fictitious but similar candidates, Daniel Highton (black) and Patrick DeBride (white), in a fabricated editorial profile published in The New York Times (Appendix C). The two candidates were said to be running against each other in the Democratic primary to be mayor of the City of

31 Racial transition refers to an election outcome in which the race of the incoming mayor is different than the race of incumbent mayor. 32 In 1999, Martin O’Malley, a white democrat, received nearly a one-third of the black vote to become mayor of Baltimore, MD, a city in which approximately 63 percent of the electorate is black. 39

Aurora, where it was noted that the incumbent could not seek reelection because of term limits.

Following this introduction, participants were asked a series of questions about each candidate, from basic biographic recall of the candidates to judgments about how each might deal with different policy issues (e.g., economy, employment, crime). The final component called for participants to indicate whether they would vote for each candidate.

Hypotheses

Following the theoretical framework developed earlier, the following two expectations represent the formal hypotheses for the candidate portion of the experiment.

First, it has been well established that the presence of a same-race candidate on the ballot is packaged with political meaning and, thus, cues racial voting (McConnaughy et al. 2010).

Therefore, I expect that:

• Hypothesis 1: African American participants will express greater preference (i.e., evaluations and vote) for the black candidate, Daniel Highton, than for the white candidate, Patrick DeBride.

However, this expectation should not be taken to mean that white candidates are always perceived as being unable to meet the demands of black residents. I argue that negative conditions in majority-black cities can make black candidates vulnerable and, as a result, white candidates more appealing. Thus, I also expect that:

• Hypothesis 2: African American participants will express an increased preference for Patrick DeBride, the white candidate, in the condition in which a black incumbent governs a poorly performing city.

Results

Table 2.3 presents the mean feeling thermometer score for candidate evaluations. To

establish a baseline preference without regard to race of the participant or condition, a

paired-samples t-test was conducted to compare within group means. There was a significant

effect for race of candidate, t(277)=4.66 p = .0000, such that the black candidate (M=.67,

SD=.27) received a more favorable evaluation than the white candidate (M=.61, SD= .28).

These results suggest that, on average, the presence of the black candidate in the majority-

black, municipal election does attract higher favorability.

Black Participants White Participants Daniel Highton Patrick DeBride Daniel Highton Patrick DeBride Black Incumbent, .64 .56 .76 .71 Good City Black Incumbent, .66 .61 .62 .61 Bad City White Incumbent, .74 .64 .69 .72 Good City White Incumbent, .63 .52 .65 .62 Bad City Note: Entries are the standardized mean scores from a feeling thermometer, scored 0-1.

Table 2.3. Candidate Evaluation, by Race of Participant and Experimental Condition

However, the preference expectation is specific to the evaluations by black

participants. Therefore, I next consider if the evidence presented in Table 2.3 supports the

same-race hypothesis for each condition. To do this, another series of paired-samples t-test

are conducted for African Americans to compare their mean evaluations of the candidates 41

across each of the conditions. Again, the data indicate a blacks participants do, on average across the conditions, have a significant preference for the black candidate (M=. 67, SD=.

30) over the white candidate (M=. 59, SD=. 31), t(174)=4.64, p=. 0000. Indeed, this preference is consistent across each of the conditions, though its strength varies by the treatment under consideration. For example, the difference between the candidates is only marginally significant in the second condition (p=09), the reasons for which I’ll return to shortly.

Figure 2.3 presents this point more clearly. It displays the mean difference observed in the candidate evaluations, which is achieved by subtracting the feeling thermometer score of the white candidate from the black candidate, so that positive values indicate warmer feelings toward the latter, i.e., the black candidate. Consistent with the previous findings, the data suggest that black and white participants generally express warmer feelings toward the black candidate. However, an analysis of variance reveals that between group difference in candidate evaluations is non-significant for black participants, F(3,171) = 0.39, p = .76, and white participants F (3, 99) = .91, p = .44.

Black Participants White Participants

0.10** 0.10** 0.08** 0.05+ 0.05+ 0.04+ 0.01 -0.02

Black Incumbent, Good Black Incumbent, Bad White Incumbent, Good White Incumbent, Bad City City City City

Figure 2.3. Differences in Candidate Evaluation, by Race of Participant and Experimental Conditions

Still, these trends are worth noting. If we consider the evaluations of black participants in the second condition, for example, where the treatment is a black incumbent managing a poorly performing city, we see that difference in between the two candidates is at its lowest and only marginally significant (p = .097). This indicates that black participants increased their liking of the white candidate in that particular condition, as evidenced by second column of Table 2.3.

Candidate Policy Evaluations

In contrast to the simple comparisons of how black and white participants evaluate same race candidates, a more nuanced approach would take into account how prospective evaluations of how these candidates would perform in particular policy arenas. This perspective allows us to unpack some of the motivations the may bias the judgments that

we’ve seen up to this point, especially if we accept as true that race is packaged with political meaning about policy congruence. Table 2.4 summarizes the prospective evaluations for each candidate and each issue.

Table 2.4. Evaluation of Candidate Capability, by Treatment, Issue, and Race of

(1) Black Incumbent, Good City Black Participants White Participants Crime Education Economy Crime Education Economy Daniel Highton .56 .70 .65 .68 .64 .66 Patrick DeBride .48 .62 .62 .62 .63 .64 Difference .08+ .08 .03 .06 .01 .02

(2) Black Incumbent, Bad City Black Participants White Participants Crime Education Economy Crime Education Economy Daniel Highton .57 .61 .59 .47 .52 .49 Patrick DeBride .51 .55 .55 .49 .49 .46 Difference .06 .06 .04 -.02 .03 .03

(3) White Incumbent, Good City Black Participants White Participants Crime Education Economy Crime Education Economy Daniel Highton .64 .68 .68 .55 .62 .63 Patrick DeBride .56 .61 .61 .64 .61 .60 Difference .08+ .07+ .07 -.09 .01 .03

(4) White Incumbent, Bad City Black Participants White Participants Crime Education Economy Crime Education Economy Daniel Highton .61 .60 .60 .60 .57 .51 Patrick DeBride .45 .51 .49 .52 .53 .49 Difference .16** .09* .11** .08 .04 .02 Note: Entries are standardized means, rescaled so that 0 means ‘Not very well’ and 1 mean ‘Extremely well’ on the question “….how well do you think he would do in dealing with the following issues if he were elected today?” Daniel Highton is the name of the black candidate; Patrick DeBride is the name of the white candidate. + p<.10, *p<.05, **, p<.01, ***p<.001.

Participant

There, we see that when black participants are asked to anticipate how well they think each candidate would do in dealing with the different issues, Daniel Highton, the black 45

candidate, attracts greater confidence in each of the domains despite having identical qualifications to the white candidate, Patrick DeBride. There are no notable within group differences among white participants. Indeed, it appears that the presence of a black candidate on the ballot provides a greater sense of optimism among black voters, especially when it comes to dealing with issues relevant to urban communities. If we look across conditions, however, the black candidate loses his advantage when a black incumbent governed over a poorly performing city.

To this point, an analysis of variance demonstrated that the effect of the treatment revealed significant ingroup bias in evaluations of how candidates would perform on a specific policy domain across conditions. Post hoc analyses using the Bonferonni correction indicate that white participants had greater confidence in how their same-race candidate’s ability to deal with all three of the issue areas. For example, white participants displayed greater confidence in their expectations for how the white candidate would perform on issues related to education (M = .63 compared to M = .49, p = .051) and the economy (M =

.64 compared to M = .46, p = .007) when a black incumbent was framed as leading a high performing city rather than a poorly performing city, as illustrated by Table 2.4. Interestingly, there are no differences in confidence for black participants between conditions. In general, this is likely the result of high evaluations across the conditions.

Racial Crossover

1.2 Black Candidate White Candidate 1 0.93 0.88 0.86 0.8 0.84 0.6 0.61 0.50 0.51 0.53 0.4 0.2 0 Black Black White White Black Black White White Incumbent,Incumbent, Incumbent, Incumbent, Incumbent,Incumbent, Incumbent, Incumbent, Good City Bad City Good City Bad City Good City Bad City Good City Bad City

Figure 2.4. Predicted Probabilities of Black Support for Candidates, by Condition (95% CI)

Figure 2.4 presents the results using the predicted probabilities of black participants’ willingness to vote for each candidate. Here, we see that the model does not significantly predict the likelihood of supporting the either candidate. The overlapping confidence intervals indicate that the estimated outcomes are not significantly different from each other.

However, these data do highlight an important, consistent trend with regard to the consequences of retrospective evaluations. For example, while the level of support for the black candidate is overwhelmingly high among black participants, it drops to its lowest point in the condition in which a black incumbent governs a poorly performing municipality. This is a marginal change, to be sure. Nevertheless, the implications are made more whole and apparent by the fact that the pattern reverses in direction and magnitude for the white

candidate. That is to say, black participants were most likely to vote for Patrick DeBride when there was a black incumbent (black) managing a struggling city. This general pattern is consistent with the expectations, though it fails to meet the standard of significance.

Discussion

In this study, I find group-serving biases in the assignment of accountability to incumbents who are depicted as representing a poorly performing, majority-black city.

Specifically, the data show that black participants, unlike their white counterparts, make racial distinctions about the extent to which each incumbent was answerable for the city’s condition. In other words, they discount the amount of blame and responsibility attributed to the same-race politician, relative to the white incumbent mayor. These ingroup biases extend to evaluations of same-race candidates as well, as demonstrated by the second portion of the experiment. However, it also appears that these positive evaluations can be made vulnerable if the incumbent is black and the municipal condition poor, such that black participants become marginally more likely to crossover for a white candidate.

The Incumbent. The extent to which performance matters notwithstanding, it appears that, for blacks, the presence of a same-race incumbent mayor can potentially undermine full judgments of accountability. In general, the data reveal that the mean assignment of accountability was approximately ten points lower for the black incumbent than for the white incumbent, even though the city’s performance was manipulated to be exactly the same. No such differences existed for white participants, who found both incumbents equally accountable for the city’s negative condition. The racial difference in these judgments can be explained by the nature of each group’s numerical, racial representation. For example, 48

it has been demonstrated by Bettencourt et al. (1999) that situations that heighten the salience of group membership can exacerbate bias among numerical minorities. This occurs, in part, because unequal representation directs minorities to be more attentive to the stability of the group. Therefore, white participants, for whom racial representation in a non-issue, have little reason to distinguish between incumbents. To be sure, they are able to sanction both without group-based consequences.

This bias in assignment is made more evident when evaluations of blame are considered in isolation with regard to the different policy domains, as illustrated by Figure 3.

This nuance helps to highlight the tendency of group members to exhibit more ingroup bias on specific issues. For example, the data demonstrates that black participants blamed black incumbents less when it came to education and to the economy, but not for crime.33 One possibility is that education and economic considerations invoke schema-based distrust of the out-group because of their relationship to civil rights issues like school desegregation and employment discrimination, both major issues for which black leaders sought redress. In addition, despite some notable gains over the last five decades, disparities in education and opportunity continue to undermine social mobility within black communities. Who is answerable for crime seems less clear for black participants, however. Perhaps this is because

33 Interestingly, the data reveal the exact opposite evaluation among white participants, who find black incumbents to be more blameworthy on the issue of crime. Even though it fails to reach statistical significance (Figure 3), it is worth pointing out because in the only issue for which the assignment of blame is notable for white participants. On the one hand, the judgments of blame may reflect conservative ideology that attributes the nature of crime to individual predispositions (i.e., cultural). On the other hand, it is possible that white participants are responding to the normative expectations that descriptive, racial representation should alleviate these kinds of community problems. In other words, they might expect that black incumbents would be better able to deal with the issue of crime in the communities from which they come. 49

black perpetrators and black victims are often located within the community, and thus crime is not perceived as being the product of systematic discrimination.34

The Candidate. It is important to note that these data do not indicate that black incumbents are absolved of their responsibility. Instead, they suggest that black incumbents may be buffered against the full power of negative judgments typical in the reward-punishment model of electoral politics (see e.g., Howell and McLean). That’s not to say that there are no electoral consequences for poor performance. Instead, the burden may be transferred onto black candidates who are following black incumbents who have managed a struggling municipality. The decrease in the difference between candidate evaluations in that particular condition is suggestive and trends in a way that supports the earlier assertions of racial crossover voting, that blacks might increase their likelihood of supporting white candidates under negative conditions.

This setback to black candidates is marginal, however. Black participants continue to provide overwhelming support for the same-race candidate (see Figure 2.4), especially in the conditions in which there is a white incumbent. Even so, that black participants decrease their expression of support in relation to the same-race candidate is not trivial. In fact, this finding is reproduced when participants are asked to anticipate and evaluate candidate competence in the three policy areas (see Table 2.4). In the condition in which there is a black incumbent, coupled with a poorly performing city, the difference between the two candidates is statistically indistinguishable across each of the three issues. It is possible that this diminished support is a function of retrospective considerations. However, it is not clear

34 According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2009, blacks were more likely than whites to be the victim of overall violent crime, robbery, and aggravated assaults. 50

when or how these considerations materialize in a way that disadvantages the black candidate.

Is there a tipping point for racial crossover voting? Anecdotal evidence suggest that there might be a set of negative circumstances that can help facilitate support for white candidates over black candidates in majority-black cities. It was perhaps high rates of unemployment in Gary, the unrelenting crime in Baltimore, or the mismanagement of post-

Katrina New Orleans that played a part in the election of white mayors in those cities. I find partial evidence of that possibility here. For black participants, the likelihood of supporting the white candidate increases to 61 percent, an almost ten point boost comparatively, in the black incumbent, bad city condition. Simultaneously, the likelihood of their voting for the black candidate drops to 84 percent in comparison to the other conditions. These differences are not statistically different from one another, but trend in a way that is compelling and in the direction of the initial hypothesis.

There are of course other factors, such as endorsements (Bullock 1984), that could have played a role in the election of white candidate in these cities. Further, there are other variables, in addition to performance, that can have an important effect on incumbent accountability. I would be remiss if I did not address some other limitations to this current study. First, one may take issue with my use of a small, convenience sample of students to make generalizations about community psychology and political behavior. This is a constraint, to be sure; however, I would contend that students are also a part of communities and social groups in which these same group-serving biases can and do emerge.

Second, and similar, is the use of laboratory experiments instead of a field experiment (or natural experiment) to satisfy the causal story about how communities respond to poor 51

performance. Field experiments are especially appropriate for the questions posed by this study. The use of laboratory has played an important role in helping reveal compelling evidence about bias in judgments of accountability than be leveraged in later field research.

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Chapter 3: Race, Scandal, and Political Accounts

When Jesse Jackson, Jr. was re-elected for an eighth term to Illinois’ 2nd

Congressional district in November of 2012, he did so by capturing 63 percent of the vote.

It was not an unusual victory given that Mr. Jackson was a popular incumbent and that his two opponents had little name recognition. But, despite the obvious incumbent advantage, the election itself was unconventional. Consider, first, that the congressman had disappeared from the public before his primary, leading to a prolonged absence from both Capitol Hill and his re-election campaign.35 Complicating matters further, Jackson was also being investigated for a series of alleged ethical and criminal violations.36

Are politicians hurt by allegations of wrongdoings? Indeed, they are. And if the judgments of citizens are any indicator, then incumbents are most certainly vulnerable following a misdeed (Praino et al. 2013). The penalties range from reputational setbacks to a loss of votes on Election Day (Maier 2010). There is considerable evidence from previous research that suggest that there is in fact a marginal electoral penalty associated with malfeasance (but see Alford et al. 1994), costing an incumbent (Peters and Welch 1980) from

5 percent (Bassinger 2012) to 10 percent (Hibbings and Welch 1997) of their general election

35 It was later learned that Jackson had checked himself into an unknown treatment facility, then later into the Mayo Clinic, where he was reportedly diagnosed with bipolar disorder. 36 Ashley Southall. “Jesse Jackson Jr. Gets 30 Months, and His Wife 12, to Be Served at Separate Times.” New York Times, 14 August 2013. 58

vote.37 But, despite being embroiled in questionable behavior, and the hits to institutional trust that result (Bowler and Karp 2004), some incumbents survive their scandal (Peters and

Welch 1980; see also Brown 2006). How? The answer is seems to be elusive, but scholars of political corruption have offered competing explanations, from a lack of information on the part of voters about the scandal (Winters and Weltz-Shapiro 2013) to the electoral strength of the disgraced incumbent (Herrick 2000).

The purpose of the two studies reported in this chapter is to explore an additional explanation, one focused on the possibility of ingroup bias in judgments of black and white elected officials following allegations of sexual or financial misconduct. Specifically, the goal is to first determine whether racial ingroup members (e.g., blacks) are more or less punitive to a same-race politician compared to an out-race politician involved in a scandal situation.

Are there racial differences in these judgments? Or, are both groups equally harsh or lenient to a politician accused of untoward behavior? The second goal is to explore the extent to which political accounts (or, explanations) work to remediate or otherwise reduce the evaluative consequences of ethical lapses.

To do accomplish these goals, I rely on data generated from a non-representative, population-based survey experiment of voting-eligible black and white Americans.

Participants were exposed to a fabricated news story that detailed the alleged wrongdoings

(i.e., extramarital affair or financial impropriety) of a fictitious elected official who is varied to be either black or white. In general, the data support the racial bias expectation, providing evidence that blacks are, on average, less harsh in their judgments of same-race politicians than their white counterparts. The second experiment deals with political accounts, and is

37 To be fair, it is worth noting that Jesse Jackson Jr.’ vote share dropped below 80 percent (63 %) for the first time since being elected. 59

restricted to African American participants. Treatments in this embedded module include additional information about how a black politician responds, i.e., the account they offer

(e.g., denial) in response to the accusations made in the original vignette. The data reveal that accounts do work at reducing some of the negative evaluations, but the different political accounts are not as equally effective.

Are there Differences in How Voters Penalize Politicians?

The extent to which elected officials are immune to, or inoculated against, their misdeed depends on a series of mitigation or aggravating factors. For example, Herrick

(2000) finds that House members’ survivability is linked to media coverage, an incumbent’s electoral strength, and their institutional clout. In addition, Doherty et al. (2011) note that people generally react more negatively to financial scandals than they do to sex scandals (see also Funk 1996), qualified by the finding that abuses of power significantly affect responses to both types of scandal.

In what ways do individual or group-based differences affect how voters penalize politicians? Consider, as an example, Johnston’s (1986) examination of social class and perceptions of corruption. He finds class variation between lower-middle and upper-middle class on perceptions of corruptness when it comes to issues of “favoritism.” That is, those in lower-middle and middle class status tended to resent cases of favoritism, whereas those in the upper-middle and upper status groups were more tolerant of them (Johnston 1986, 387).

He reasoned that this was likely result of how the different classes experienced special privileges, and suggested that higher-status individuals were simply more accustomed to its benefits. This kind of variation extends to gender, too. Swamy et al. (2001) note gender

differences on attitudes toward the acceptability of taking bribes, finding that women were less likely than men to condone bribe taking.

To the extent that political psychologists have considered these differences, they have usually used experiments to determine the impact of scandal on political judgments.

For example, Smith et al. (2005) find that women evaluate embattled politicians more harshly than do men.38 Interestingly, they find no effects for sex of the politician, meaning that both male and female elected officials are evaluated the same following a transgression.

Regrettably, the authors do not fully test the interactive effects of sex of the politician and sex of the respondent outside of mitigating circumstances. As a result, it is not clear how women might evaluate female (or male) politicians involved in a scandal.

Much of the research on the impact of scandal on political judgments in the U.S. typically examines candidate support without regard to race. Unlike gender, there is perhaps little theoretical reason to believe that racial groups would vary in their perception of, or response to, corruption or scandal. Yet, when voters are prompted to think about what corruption entails, racial differences do emerge. In particular, Redlawsk and McCann (2005) find that whites are more inclined to see corruption as “law-breaking” and less as

“favoritism.” The rationale is no doubt similar to the one provided by Johnston (1985) above. In terms of penalty for alleged misconduct, Berinsky et al. (2011) observe that white voters penalize black candidates disproportionately more than white politicians for their involvement in sexual scandals.

It seems quite clear then that race, too, can matter in terms of political judgments.

However, given the limited nature of the rubric used to understand the consequences of

38 Note, though, that the differences between men and women were small. 61

scandal, there is still little systematic evidence for how sanctions work within groups. Adida et al. (2013) offer a useful departure from this intergroup paradigm. Notably, they use an experiment to uncover whether priming a specific racial identity encourages race-based bias among blacks and Latinos. Indeed, the data supported their expectation that if black participants were primed with a racial cue for a same-race politician, then they would be less likely to believe that politician was guilty of misconduct.39

Discounted Penalties? For Whom?

It is worth nothing that Adida et al. (2013) draw on the corruption case of congressman Charles B. Rangel, an African American, for their experimental treatments.40 In

2010, Rangel, a forty-year veteran of the House of Representatives, was found guilty of eleven counts of ethical violations. Although the House voted to censure Rangel, he won his bid for reelection in Harlem nonetheless. These facts alone are immaterial, except that an interesting, and perhaps ironic, pattern seems to emerge out of his Harlem district.41 For example, Mr. Rangel’s congressional predecessor, Adam Clayton Powell, was expelled from the House of Representatives in 1967 because of absenteeism and indictments for financial impropriety.42 Like his successor, he would win re-election, sometimes even flaunting how little he had to do to secure a victory in his Harlem district.43

39 Among Latinos, there was no racial bias in assessments of guilt, even with the presence of the racial cue. 40 The experiment drew on Charlie Rangel’s mixed racial parentage; his mother was black, and his father was Puerto Rican. 41 Rangel defeated Powell in 1970. 42 In a 7-1 decision, Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the House could not exclude a member who was lawfully elected by the constituents of his district. 43 Garland, Phyllis, and Richard Kilberg. Adam Clayton Powell. DVD. Directed by Richard Kilberg. 1989. 62

Putting aside the other reasons for why incumbents win following transgressions, if race- based bias is to be believed, then the predicaments of Jackson, Rangel, and Powell may well reveal just how much black politicians are inoculated against harsh scrutiny from their racial group. To be clear, it is evident that ensnared white politicians can be inoculated, too, despite their misdeeds, but for reasons that are not a function of race. To be sure, it has been argued that African Americans are more likely engage in what Russell-Brown (2006) calls black protectionism, in which the racial group extends the cloak of racial protection to esteemed members under siege.

Hypotheses

I test this proposition empirically, and argue that race does indeed act as an additional layer of protection against scrutiny following allegations of misconduct. This answer is complicated, but research on attribution theory and ingroup allocation bias (Tajfel and Turner 1979; see Bourhis and Harvey 2010 or Hewstone 2002 for a review) may provide an explanation as to why black incumbents may be reprieved in the face of poor performance. These cognitive biases exist across contexts and are motivated by group members wanting to either protect or enhance their ingroup (see, e.g., Weber 1994). As noted in the previous chapter, the mechanism that is often responsible for this kind of sorting is called ethnocentric attribution, which is the process by which members of different social groups assign biased, causal stories to explain the behavior of their own group and that of other social groups (Tuner and Hewstone 2010). In short, positive outcomes or behaviors for the ingroup are attributed to inherent, personal traits, while negative outcomes and behavior are the function of external factors. In contrast, positive outcomes for

outgroups are the result of external factors, while negative outcomes and behaviors are the function of inherent, personal traits (Hewstone 1990).

Hypothesis 1: Black participants will evaluate a black politician who is involved in a scandal less harshly than a white politician who is involved in a scandal.

However, it is important to note that this kind of bias should not be taken to mean that there is a free pass to engage in untoward behavior. To be sure, there is an incentive among groups to punish deviant members. Because groups want to maintain positive distinction and good standing, deviants who threaten that status are expelled in what

Marques (2010) calls the black sheep effect.

Hypothesis 3: White participants will evaluate a white politician who is involved in a scandal more harshly than a black politician who is involved in a scandal.

There are two competing explanations for why this might be true among whites.

First, subjective group dynamics suggest that deviant ingroup members will suffer worse than an out-group in terms of evaluations as a way of social distancing. In other words, ingroup derogation occurs as a function of group maintenance. However, it has been previously established that racial ingroup identity is less salient among whites (see Brewer

2003); therefore group members have little reason to make judgments along those lines. As an alternative, then, it is quite possible that whites won’t make distinctions, and that they are equally punitive in their judgments.

Something-Gate: How Politicians Respond to Scandal

There are indeed second acts in politics, even for those elected officials disgraced by scandal. The test of forgiveness in politics, however, is unmistakably tied to the impression

(and blame) management strategies (McGraw 2003; 1991) employed by politicians following

a transgression. The goal of accounts is to reduce any assignable blame (Weaver 1986), and, thus, assuage public opinion of any residual outrage or penalty. To do this, though, elected officials must respond to voters with an explanation, or an account, that reconciles the fallout from the alleged violation. The effectiveness of the strategy, however, depends on the kind of account used (see Cody and McLaughlin 1990 for a review), the situation requiring the response, as well as a host of other mediating and moderating variables, such as a voter’s gender (Smith et al. 2005) or their social predispositions (see e.g., McGraw and Hubbard

1996).

Whatever the case, proffering an account presupposes reputational remediation by an otherwise disaffected public. For example, Riordan et al. (1983) found that, in some cases, excuses reduced responsibility attributions and reputational damages to a politician’s character.

However, Smith and her colleagues (2005) found excuses to be the most objectionable, a departure from their expectation that denials would be the least effective account. McGraw

(1990, 1991) offers a more nuanced typology of political accounts (i.e., excuses and justifications), with a focus on unpopular policy decisions (relevant to misconduct, too). In general, she finds that excuses are an ineffective tool for minimizing blame for policy outcomes, while certain types of justifications improve voters’ satisfaction with the explanation, and approval of the elected official, considerably.

It is worth nothing that the literature on political accounts is replete with suitable responses for managing blame following a failure event. Indeed, some are more effective than others at reducing the penalties produced by political malfeasance. However, while the extant literature has long focused on excuses and justifications as primary response types given to a blaming constituency, the second experiment that follows focuses on less conventional

accounts. In particular, Experiment 2 considers how denial, the decision not to comment, or making a counter-claim (i.e., racism) affects political judgments. In each case, the goal of the strategy pursued, much like traditional political accounts, is to reduce blame or avoid it altogether (Weaver 1986). The difference of course is that by accounting for unbecoming or inappropriate behavior using the traditional framework, there must first be an admission that a questionable event occurred.

To deny an incident, on the other hand, is to disavow having engaged in any untoward behavior in the first place. Nevertheless, the traditional accounts paradigm is instructive and, thus, informs the hypotheses used to explain the differences in the effectiveness of accounts following transgressions. In accordance with this framework, it should be clear that the baseline expectation is that the type of explanation, or account, offered by a politician will affect political judgments about that politician. First, since denials are the most common – and perhaps most instinctual – of the alternative account strategies available to politicians (but see Bennett 1980), it is expected that this particular response will be at least moderately effective at reducing political penalties.

Hypothesis 4: The account, or explanation, proffered by a politician will affect the evaluations of that politician, with counter-claims of racism being the most effective and no comment being the least effective.

This is consistent with Smith et al.’s (2005) finding that denials were no different than the justifications that were offered by male and female politicians. Second, counter-claims of racism are expected to be the most effective account strategy, in part because this strategy is likely to cue group-based threat in a way that is more meaningful than denial. In other words, because responses that reverse the burden of blame by alleging that the accuser is acting with malice toward a marginalized racial minority, members of that race group should be more

likely to rally around the targeted official in a way that is protective (see, e.g., Russell-Brown

2006). Third, because accounts are thought of as tools for politicians who, when given an opportunity, will make a statement to explain or respond to (alleged) behavior, cases in which they do not comment are expected to produce higher penalties.

Method

To test the hypotheses for these two studies, data are drawn from an adult sample collected through Qualtrics Lab. Nine hundred and seventy-one (N=971) respondents answered a web-based survey conducted in July 2013. Because this study is interested in the attitudes and behavior of two particular subgroups, i.e., black and white Americans, the sample is stratified by race and is non-representative. Eligibility (e.g., being African American or white) and inclusion criterion (e.g., voting eligible) were established a priori.

The two studies were designed to examine group-based (race) bias in evaluations of an elected official following allegations of sexual or financial impropriety. In Experiment 1, the primary goal is to compare reactions to same-race and-opposite-race politicians who are accused of inappropriate (scandalous) behavior. I begin by considering the perceived seriousness of the accusations faced by the fictitious mayors, then move on to examine the impact of race and scandal on candidate evaluations. I conclude Experiment 1 with a test for gender and race effects on punitive judgments. Experiment 2 was designed to investigate how different impression management strategies, namely accounts, influence evaluations of politicians. It focuses on the effectiveness accounts have in mitigating the penalties associated with misconduct. The analysis begins with an assessment of satisfaction with the

manipulated accounts, and then proceeds to test the differences of the accounts on a series of judgments.

Experiment 1

Experiment 1 tests the hypotheses about ingroup bias in fairly straightforward manner. It has already been demonstrated elsewhere (see, e.g., Doherty et al. 2011; Funk

1996) that voters make evaluative distinctions bout the type of scandal in which a politician is involved. However, because this study considers the impact of scandal on group-based bias, these two types of scandal (i.e., sex scandal, financial scandal) are retained for the purposes of group comparisons within the transgression. The purpose here is not to test whether a financial or sex scandal is worse; rather, it is to understand how race bias might operate in each scandal type independently. To do this, I measure participants’ attitudes and judgments with a battery of questions (ranged 0-1) that can be best categorized as trait perceptions, undesirable emotional reactions, and retaliatory punishment. To test ingroup bias, I compute the difference in responses between two politicians, one black and one white, on a series of judgments in following allegations to either sexual or financial impropriety. Table 3.1 displays the number of participants in each condition for the first experiment, in which there were seven hundred and twenty participants.

Conditions Observations Black Mayor, Financial Scandal 207 White Mayor, Financial Scandal 183 Black Mayor, Sex Scandal 177 White Mayor, Sex Scandal 153 Total 720

Table 3.1. Number of Observations, by Experimental Condition

Participants

Seven hundred and twenty respondents from the online panel participated in the first study. The sample was approximately 45 percent African American, and had an average age of 48. In terms of other demographic variables, 52 percent were women and more than half reported having some college. Table 3.2 displays the demographic characteristics of the sample, which is balanced between men and women.

Observations (n) 971

Race White 398 Black 573

Sex Male 482 Female 489

Age (mean) 46

Party Identification (%) Strong Democrat 39 Weak Democrat 11 Leaning Democrat 9 Independent 24 Leaning Republican 4 Weak Republican 4 Strong Republican 9

Note: % entries are rounded to the nearest whole number, and therefore may not sum to 100.

Table 3.2. Demographic Characteristics of Full Sample

Procedure

First, respondents were asked to answer a series of questions about standard demographic characteristics, including age, income, and partisanship. Inclusion criteria was built into the experiment, such that respondents who were not eligible to vote in the United

States or who did not identify as white/Caucasian or black/African American, were disqualified from participating in the remainder of the survey.

Next, participants were randomly assigned to one-of-four experimental conditions, each represented by a fabricated article said to be published by The New York Times, which featured an elected official (i.e., a mayor) who had been accused of either financial

(Appendix D) or sexual misconduct (Appendix E). For example, the last line of the first paragraph stated that the mayor, “who is married, has been engaged in a sexual relationship with a female aid” or that he “used over $25,000 of the city’s expense account for personal, non-government business.” Moreover, the stories included a manipulated photo that varied the race of the incumbent to be either black or white.

Following the article, respondents were asked four questions that functioned as manipulation checks. Importantly, if respondents misidentified the name of the mayor mentioned in the article (i.e., Daniel Highton), they were disqualified from the experiment by way of a filtering process built into the Qualtrics interface. Those respondents who were dropped from the sample were subsequently replaced to maintain the number of observations. I analyzed an additional manipulation check following data collection to determine if respondents accurately identified the race of the mayor featured in their scandal condition. Respondents were dropped (N=53) if they identified any racial category other than two that were manipulated (i.e., black, white), resulting in approximately 98 percent accurately identifying the race of the mayor in their respective condition.

Measures

Table 3.3 displays the dependent variables of interest for both experiments, most of which have been adapted from Weiner (1995). Together, they measured trait perception, negative emotional reaction, questions about accountability, and retaliatory punishment in response to the alleged misconduct. The answers to the corresponding questions (see

Appendix G) were originally scaled to range form 0 to 10, but were standardized to range from 0 to 1. Note, too, that for the purposes of the studies that follow, punishment is broadly defined to mean negative evaluations on any of these variables. However, when referring to the “punishment” variable, I mean to distinguish retaliatory punishment distributed to the transgressor in response the transgression.

Standard Name of Variable Mean Deviation Seriousness .81 .21 Representativeness .32 .28 Truthful .62 .21 Honest .35 .23 Moral .32 .23 Trustworthy .31 .23 Target .35 .26 Control .84 .25 Responsibility .54 .32 Blameworthy .63 .25 Embarrassed .55 .34 Forgive .53 .29 Sympathy .33 .29 Angry .65 .29 Punishment .60 .25 Electability .26 .26 Note: Means are standardized to range from 0 to 1.

Table 3.3. Descriptive Statistics for Dependent Variables

Results

For clarity, the results for the two experiments are presented separately. Further, because of the number of dependent variables, only those that yield significant effects are discussed. For Experiment 1, the results are divided into several sections. First, I first consider the effects of the scandal conditions on judgments on the seriousness of the accusations, and then consider how participants judge the representativeness of each of the embroiled politicians. Second, I test evaluative consequences of scandal allegations on trait perceptions, negative emotional reactions, judgments of accountability, and retaliatory punishment.

Seriousness of Accusations

Figure 3.1 depicts the mean judgments of seriousness by scandal type and race of mayor. In general, the manipulations had the expected effects on perceptions of seriousness in each of the scandal conditions. A three-way analysis of variance revealed a main effect for scandal, F(1, 712) = 86.99, p = 0.000, η2 = .11, such that financial scandals (M = .87) were evaluated as being more serious than sex scandal (M = .73). Nevertheless, the allegations for both types of misconduct were generally recognized as being serious. Further, the interaction for scandal type and race of the mayor was not significant, meaning that there were no racial differences in how seriousness was assessed between the fictitious mayors. There was an interaction between scandal type and race of participant, however, F(1, 712) = 3.96, p = .05,

2 η = .004.

Financial Scandal Sex Scandal

0.87 0.87 0.71 0.75 Mean Seriousness (0-1)

Black Mayor White Mayor Black Mayor White Mayor

Figure 3.1. Mean Judgments of Seriousness, by Scandal and Race of Mayor

Representation

If we begin with the assumption that race-based bias among blacks in politics is a function of, at least partially, the potential policy benefits associated with increased descriptive representation, then blacks should believe that same-race politicians will be more representative of people like them. After all, race is politically packaged, and thus affects a host of decisions including voting (see, e.g., Dawson 1994). Table 3.4 considers this proposition of representativeness. Differences were computed for each racial group, such that negative entries indicate that participants feel that the same-race politician is less representative of people like them.

As expected, the data support the general representation hypothesis, finding that blacks do evaluate the black politician as being more representative than the white politician.

The effects are most pronounced in the financial scandal condition, t(168) = 2.83, p < .01, d

= .44, though it holds true in the sex scandal, too. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprising given the expectations about the black sheep effect introduced earlier, white participants evaluate the white politician as being less representative of people like them. The differences are small and about the same across scandal types; both are only marginally significant (ps <

.10).

Financial Scandal Black Mayor White Mayor Difference

White Participants .25 .22 -.03 Black Participants .38 .26 .12**

Sex Scandal Black Mayor White Mayor Difference

White Participants .33 .28 -.05 Black Participants .41 .34 .07+

Note: Entries are mean evaluations, recoded to range from 0 to 1. +p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.

Table 3.4. Mean Evaluation of Representativeness, by Scandal Type, Race of Politician, and Race of Participant

Judgments and Evaluative Consequences of Scandal Allegations

What impact do allegations of misconduct have on the evaluations and judgments of same-race politicians? In general, violations of social norms should have a negative effect on how an elected official is perceived, evaluated, and ultimately judged. However, there are circumstances in which these judgments are buffered, or discounted, so that racial ingroup members are protected against the full force of negative consequences. For example, recall that the expectation is that black participants will be less harsh toward same-race elected officials and harsher toward opposite-race politicians, while whites will be harsher toward ingroup politicians.

Blacks. Table 3.5 displays the results for the judgments made by African

American participants in response to allegations of misconduct, by race of participant and race of the mayor portrayed in the treatment. In general, there is no notable evidence of ingroup bias among black participants in the condition with a sex scandal. However, for financial misconduct, there is ingroup favoring for five of the nine variables, two of which are significant only at the 10 percent level. For example, black participants evaluated the black elected official to be more honest (M = .37 vs. M = 30), t(187) = 1.80, p < .05, d = .26, less worthy of blame (M = .60 vs. M = .68), t(187) = 2.15, p < .05, d = .34, and were generally more sympathetic (M = .35 vs. M = .23) toward them than toward the opposite- race elected official in the financial misconduct conditions.

Sex Financial Scandal Scandal Black White Black White Politician Politician Diff Politician Politician Diff Honest .39 .37 .02 .37 .30 .07* Moral .33 .31 .02 .36 .30 .06+ Trustworthy .33 .33 .00 .32 .26 .06+ Blameworthy .59 .65 -.06+ .60 .68 -.08* Responsible .59 .52 .07 .54 .50 .04 Control .82 .85 .03 .81 .85 .04 Angry .53 .51 .02 .68 .72 .04 Sympathy .30 .30 .00 .35 .23 .13** Embarrassed .48 .48 .00 .56 .56 .00 Note: Entries are mean evaluations, recoded to range from 0 to 1. +p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.

Table 3.5. Mean Judgments by Black Participants, by Scandal and Race of Mayor

Whites. In contrast, white participants exhibit less ingroup bias, as demonstrated in Table 3.6. The data suggest that whites judged their same-race elected officials more harshly in trait perceptions, such that they were seen to be less honest, t(176)

= 1.67, p = .05, d = .25, and less moral, t(176) = 2.13, p = .01, d = .32, in the sex scandal condition. The white politician is also perceived as being less honest, as expected, in the financial scandal condition. It is worth noting that white participants do not seem to make many other racial distinctions between the two politicians faced with allegations of financial misdeeds.

Sex Financial Scandal Scandal Black White Black White Politician Politician Diff Politician Politician Diff Honest .39 .34 .05* .29 .24 .05* Moral .30 .23 .07* .28 .26 .02 Trustworthy .36 .31 .05+ .24 .21 .03 Blameworthy .63 .64 .01 .67 .67 .00 Responsible .55 .57 .02 .54 .56 .02 Control .84 .85 .01 .86 .87 .01 Angry .53 .58 .05 .77 .79 .02 Sympathy .29 .25 .04+ .23 .21 .02 Embarrassed .52 .51 .01 .65 .63 .02 Note: Entries are mean evaluations, recoded to range from 0 to 1. +p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.

Table 3.6. Mean Judgments by White Participants, by Scandal and Race of Mayor

What contributes to these differences? To determine this, I subject some of the key dependent variables to a three-way factorial ANOVA, with race of participant (black, white), scandal type (financial, sexual), and race of mayor (black, white) as factors. Note, first, that judgments of accountability yielded no effects and are therefore omitted from the discussion below.

Trait Perceptions. In terms of character assessments, there are main effects for participant’s race, F(1, 712) = 7.81, p = .01, η2 = .01, the race of mayor, F(1, 712) = 8.20, p =

.004, η2 = .01, and scandal type, F(1, 712) = 20.61, p = .000, η2 = .03, on perceptions of honesty. For example, black participants evaluated politicians as more honest (M = .31) than did their white counterparts (M = .36); the black mayor was evaluated as more honest (M =

.35) than the white mayor (M = .31); and those involved in a sex scandal were perceived as

being more honest (M = .37) than those involved in financial scandal (M =. 30). Similarly, there is a main effect of participant’s race, F(1, 712) = 12.80, p = .000, η2 = .02, and race of mayor, F(1, 712) = 6.69, p = .01, η2 = .01, on perceptions of morality. In particular, blacks believed the embattled politicians to be more moral (M = .33) than white participants (M =

.27). Last, there is a main effect for race of mayor, F(1, 712) = 4.43, p =.04, η2 = .006, and scandal type, F(1, 712) = 20.06, p = .00, η2 = .03 on perceptions of trustworthiness. Like the other traits, black mayors were evaluated more favorably (M = .31) than white participants

(M = .27), as were those involved in a sex scandal.

Emotional Reactions. Following trait perceptions, I now analyze negative emotional reactions to allegations of impropriety. There is a main effect for participant’s race, F(1, 712) = 7.96, p = .00, η2 = .01, and scandal type, F(1, 712) = .100.65, p = .00, η2 =

.12, on expressions of anticipated anger. In addition, there were main effects of race of participant, F(1, 712) = 7.11, p = .01, η2 = .01, and race of mayor, F(1, 712) = 6.05, p = .01,

η2 = .008, such that black participants expressed greater sympathy (M = .30) than whites (M

= .24). In general, blacks express greater sympathy for the black mayor (M = .29) than for the white mayor (M = .24).

Retaliatory Punishment First, a three-way analysis of variance yielded a main effect for the respondent’s race, F(1,712) = 23.90, p = .0000, η2 = .03, such that blacks were more forgiving (M = .58) than their white counterparts (M = .48). In addition, there was a main effect for scandal type, F(1,712) = 25.25, p = .0000, η2 = .01, indicating that respondents were more forgiving for sexual misdeeds (M = .58) than abuses of power in the form of financial misconduct (M =.48). Second, the severity of punishment that respondent would distribute was analyzed in a three-way factorial ANOVA, with race of participant 80

(black, white), scandal type (financial, sexual), and race of mayor (black, white). There was again a main effect for the race of the participant F(1, 712) = 4.00, p = .004, η2 = .006, scandal type, F(1, 712) = 104.28, p = .0000, η2 = .12, and race of mayor F(1, 712) = 5.68, p

= .01, η2 = .006. This was qualified by an interaction among the three factors F(1, 712) =

5.02, p = .02, η2 = .005. Figure 3.2 displays this effect, revealing that black respondents were less punitive toward the black mayor (compared to the white mayor) when financial wrongdoings were alleged.

Financial Scandal Sex Scandal

0.8 0.71 0.72 0.7 0.71 0.6 0.59 0.50 0.52 0.5 0.4 0.50 0.50 0.3 Black Mayor 0.2 0.1 White Mayor

Judgments ofJudgments Punishment 0 Black White Black White

Experimental Conditions

Figure 3.2. Mean Judgment of Punishment, by Experimental Condition and Race of Participant

Finally, a three-way analysis of variance was conducted on a measure of electability, with participant’s race, scandal type, and race of mayor as factors. A significant main effect was found for participant’s race on willingness to vote for the embattled mayor, F(1, 712) =

14.16, p = .0002, η2 = .02. Scandal type also had a main effect on willingness to vote, F(1, 81

712) = 50.95, p = .0000, η2=.06. For example, black respondents reported greater willingness

(M =. 28) than their white counterparts (M = .21) to vote for the mayor if he ran in the future. Moreover, respondents in general reported greater willingness to support a mayor accused of inappropriate sexual conduct (M = .32) than one accused of financial (M = .18) malfeasance.

Discussion

This study set out to examine the following question: Do racial groups vary in how they judge same-race politicians following allegations of misconduct? The main findings of this study are that there are racial differences in how black and white Americans judge scandal-tainted politicians. For instance, as evidence, I find that African American participants reported significantly increased positive trait perceptions, decreased judgments of accountability and punishment for same-race elected officials involved in financial scandals. For whites, however, race does not seem to operate in a way that favors same-races accused of malfeasance. In fact, in some cases, allegations of sexual impropriety against white politicians created a backlash effect, whereby white participants reported more negative trait perceptions of maligned white politicians. Beyond this, there is little evidence that sexual scandals produce racial differences, at least among blacks.

In general, these findings are consistent with the work of Claire Adida and her colleagues, who, as mentioned above, examined the effects of racial group cues on evaluations of the embattled congressman from Harlem, Charles R. Rangel. They similarly find that black participants discount judgments of accountability (i.e., guilt) depending on the cued racial identity. Together, these studies suggest that among those other factors already

considered, such as incumbency, race also matters in how embattled politicians are evaluated. Here, the data trend implicated ingroup bias in almost every evaluation made by black participants, though not all were significant. However, further research is required to explain these particular phenomena in more detail, and to determine the precise factors that lead to ingroup bias or derogation among both groups.

There are several other issues that need to be explored in future research, however.

Indeed, while this study has demonstrated that there are racial differences in how politicians are judged following scandal situations, the source of this effect remains unclear. In analyzing retaliatory punishment among participant, the race of the fictional mayor failed to yield a consistent effect. Instead, the race of the participant seemed to be a consistent factor in how punishment was distributed, regardless of the mayor’s racial group membership. It is certainly clear that race of mayor has an effect on other judgments, such as trait perceptions and emotional responses. One possibility for the lack of effect on punishment is that black participants are simply less punitive than their white counterparts, regardless of group membership (see, e.g., Adida et al.’s 2013 comparison of blacks and Latinos bias). On this point, it is possible that, overtime, institutional racism has made blacks especially skeptical of institutional sanctioning or policing. If this is the case, then it might account for these differences, though more direct tests of this question are not pursued here.

Finally, in the present study, the data trends suggest that ingroup bias among blacks is present in almost every measured dependent variable. In future research, a different experimental design would be more appropriate to determine the precise factors that contribute to race-based bias. In its present form, the data only reveal the bias, and is not particularly well equipped with additional measures to help extract meaningful answers as to

why it is so prevalent among blacks and not whites. Additionally, in the real world, it is not as easy to ignore the intersectional effects that race and gender might have on judgments of scandalized politicians (see, e.g., Swamy 2001; and Chapter 4). There is good reason to believe that there are least some gendered differences in how people respond to scandals.

Even so, I am not able to offer that analysis the appropriate consideration it deserves in this space.

Experiment 2

Experiment 2 was designed to extend the findings of the previous experiment, with attention to how a politician’s response to allegations of misconduct affects judgments toward them. In particular, recall that it focuses on the effectiveness of impression management strategies in mitigating voters’ punitive evaluations. Note, however, that I take a less conventional approach to understanding political responses to scandal. For example, this study considers how denial, the decision not to comment, or levying counter charges (i.e., racism) affects political judgments (Cody and McLaughlin 1990). In each case, the goal of the strategy pursued, much like traditional political accounts, is to reduce blame or avoid it altogether (Weaver 1986). The difference, of course, is that by accounting for unbecoming or inappropriate behavior, there must first be an admission that a questionable event occurred. However, to deny an incident is to disavow having engaged in any untoward behavior.

Method Participants

A total of two hundred and fifty-one African Americans from the online panel took part in

Experiment 2. A slight majority of the participants, approximately 51 percent, were women.

The mean age is forty-three, with a majority (73%) identifying as Democrat.

Procedure

Experiment 2 was installed in a randomized block design that sorted respondents by race, such that the sample was restricted to African American who were randomly assigned to one of three response conditions. The responses were designed to be the mayor’s reply to the (fabricated) news story’s allegation of financial misconduct (see Appendix F). For example, in each treatment, respondents were told that Daniel Highton, a black mayor, was accused of misusing government funds for personal use. The final paragraph concluded with the mayor proffering a response, which was that the allegations were “false and malicious” (i.e., denial), “racially motivated” (i.e., counter-claim), or no comment. The measurement strategy and sequence of the procedure is identical to Experiment 1; that is, respondents first answered basic demographic and psychometric questions, then were exposed to the treatments, and then answered a series of evaluative questions.

Account Condition N Control 96 Denial 83 No Comment 87 Racial Target 81 Note: For comparison, the black mayor, financial scandal condition from Experiment is used as a control.

Table 3.7. Number of Observations, by Experimental Conditions

Results

The purpose of the present empirical results is to test the effects of political responses following a financial transgression. To do this, I begin by considering the differences in satisfaction that each response produces. Then, I assess the trait perceptions, emotional reactions, judgments of accountability, and retaliatory punishment.

Satisfaction with Response

The data presented in Table 3.8 depict the satisfaction with the three different accounts.44 The first column provides the experimental group data, with the mean evaluations of satisfaction displayed in the second column and number of observations in the third column. A one-way analysis of variance showed that the effect of the response was significant, F(3, 343) = 2.97, p = .03, η2 = .02. In general, denial (M = .48) elicited greater

44 Even though participants in the control group did not receive an account, they were still asked how satisfied they were with the response. 86

satisfaction than no comment (M = .37), by the elected official. No other differences were observed.

Account Condition Mean N Control .39 96 Denial .48 83 No Comment .37 87 Racial Target .44 81 Note: For comparison, the black mayor, financial scandal condition from Experiment is used as a control.

Table 3.8. Satisfaction with Accounts

Note, though, that none of the responses were especially satisfying to respondents.

In fact, the average expression of satisfaction across the experimental conditions (M = .40) was less than the midpoint on the ten-point scale. Still, the evidence is clear in demonstrating that there are marked benefits to offering a response, at least a denial, than offering none at all.

Judgments of the Elected Official

Table 3.9 displays data on trait perceptions, negative emotional reactions, judgments of accountability, and retaliatory punishment as a function of the political accounts offered by politicians following allegations of financial misconduct. It appears that, in general, black participants in the racism account condition had higher character assessments, i.e., of the black politician being honest and moral, than participants in the control. Not surprising, these counter-claims were, as expected, also more effective than the condition in which the politician offered “no comment” for his alleged transgressions. Further, on emotional

reactions, allegations of racism (M = .58) significantly reduced anger attributions compared to the control (M = .68, p = .06) and when there was no comment (M = .69, p = .04). In terms of accountability and punishment, there is no evidence that any of the accounts effectively mitigated negative judgments. However, when asked if the elected official was unfairly targeted, participants in the racism account condition were more affirming than those in the condition in which no comment was offered, F(3, 343 = 2.86, p = .04).

Financial Scandal Control No Comment Denial Racism ANOVA

Honest .37 .35a .44 .47*a p = .001 Moral .36 .33a .43 .47*a p = .000 Trustworthy .32 .30a .39 .41*a p = .004 Blameworthy .60 .60 .57 .58 n.s. Responsible .54 .50 .56 .54 n.s. Control .81 .76 .82 .85 n.s.

Target .44 .36a .44 .47a p = .037 Angry .68 .69a .66 .58*a p = .028 Sympathy .35 .31 .36 .40 n.s. Embarrassed .56 .54 .55 .51 n.s. Forgive .54 .50 .57 .59 n.s. Punish .59 .62 .61 .58 n.s.

Elect .27 .24a .31 .35a p = .063 Note: The ANOVA column refers to the statistical significance of a one-way ANOVA across each row. Asterisks (*) indicate statistically significant differences between an account and the control, while a subscript “A” (a) indicates a difference between the accounts sharing the letter, using a Bonferroni post hoc test.

Table 3.9. Mean Evaluations and One-way ANOVA, by Account

Discussion

This study set out to explore an additional question: How do the political accounts that politicians proffer following allegations of transgressions affect how voters respond? 88

The main findings of this study is that different political accounts have varying degrees of success at reducing negative judgments following transgressions. For instance, I find evidence that the counter-claim, i.e., racism, is effective at mitigating negative reactions among African Americans toward same-race politicians. However, the results do not indicate a statistical difference between denials and counter-claims. Even so, counter-claims were consistently more effective than the control and no comment on most on trait perceptions.

The finding that a counter-claim would reduce punitive evaluations is consistent with the expectation that African Americans would respond to perceived group-based threat.

However, in many cases, the racist counter-claim was no different than a denial. One explanation for this result could be that because the counter-claim was offered without detail or a perpetrator, respondents interpreted this account as nothing more than a situational denial. For example, when Marion Barry was charged with drug possession and perjury during his tenure as mayor of Washington, DC, many within the black community were concerned that the subsequent indictment was racially motivated.45 The culpable parties were identified as the FBI and the federal prosecutor, Jay B. Stephens. In other words, without more information regarding why and how the allegations were racially motivated, blacks treated the accounts the same. Interestingly, the counter-claim did have an effect on respondent’s willingness to vote for the same-race candidate. This particular variable has important behavioral implications, insofar as it serves as a signal of electoral choice. It is worth nothing that the mean is too low (M = .29) to suggest that the account was sufficient to fully change the electoral fate of the embattled official.

45 Andrew Rosenthal. “Arrest of Barry Concerns N.A.A.C.P.” The New York Times. 23 January 1990. 89

In sum, the findings of this study have implication for the study of group politics, scandal, and political accounts. This research reveals that racial bias, as well as claims of racially motivated allegations, can change reactions to accusations of untoward behavior.

Even so, this should not be taken to mean that bias leads to absolution from misconduct. To be sure, all trait perceptions, emotional reactions, judgments of accountability, and retaliatory punishments observed here are negative sanctions, however discounted.

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Chapter 4: Managing the Margins: Racial Atypicality, Scandal, and Political Judgments

Mia Love, former mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, entered the race for the 4th

Congressional district in 2012 with the potential to make American history. Had she won her bid for Congress, she would have been the first black, Republican, Mormon woman to be elected to the House of Representatives.46 Her candidacy was unprecedented; she stood out, at least in terms of identity attributes, in a way that few other black candidates ever had. She lost that race in 2012, but with 48.5 percent of the vote to the incumbent’s 48.8 percent, a margin of less than eight hundred votes.47 48

“Can Mia Love turn the tide for black voters, [and] the GOP?” asked Politico in an online forum of political experts.49 Many of the answers, like the question, dutifully ignored how the intersection of all of her identity attributes might influence black political perception. Most of the contributors, for example, focused solely on her race, per the question, with only a few shallow nods to her partisanship, gender, and religion. None, however, could reconcile all four attributes simultaneously, nor could they situate them in the context of the election. This tendency to focus on one identity attribute at a time is commonplace in the study of politics. But how do black voters respond to elected officials who are black but who also have other identity attributes, like being female, a Republican, or gay?

46 Love’s parents are Haitian immigrants, and she was raised in the Catholic Church; however, she converted to the faith of her husband, joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 47 According to the U.S. Census, the black population of the 4th Congressional District is approximately 1.5 percent. 48 Lieutenant Governor’s Office, “Election Results: 2012 General Election,” State of Utah, http://elections.utah.gov/election-resources/election-results (accessed April 15, 2014). 49 David Mark. “Can Mia Love turn the tide for black voters, [and] the GOP?” Politico. 18 June 2012, http://www.politico.com/arena/archive/can-mia-love-turn-the-tide-for-black-voters-gop.html (accessed April 10, 2014). 94

In this chapter, I examine how black voters judge transgression committed by black elected officials who are cross-categorized, meaning that they have attributes on more than one dimensions (e.g., race plus gender) at the same time (see Brewer 2003). I depart from previous research by focusing on the intersectional (and sometimes deviant) identities of voters and politicians; and, by doing so, I am able to examine the extent to which race acts as a master status insofar as inclusion and exclusion of racially similar members are concerned.50 It is important to consider if, beyond race, attributes like gender, partisanship, and sexuality may interact to change the calculus of the presumed racial ingroup bias.

Indeed, the expanding political and social diversity of black voters and candidates alike make these potential identity combinations especially likely in future elections. For example, Mia

Love has announced that she will run again for Utah’s 4th Congressional district, and is expected to win given that the incumbent opponent to whom she lost in 2012 is set to retire.51 Likewise, other notable candidates at the national level include Herman Cain, Tim

Scott, Allen West, and, at the local level, Bruce Harris, mayor of Chatham, New Jersey,52 who is black, gay, and Republican.53 There is also Mauriel Bowser, the D.C. councilwoman who bested the scandal-tainted incumbent candidate, Vincent Gray, in the 2014 Democratic

Primary for mayor. If she wins in the general election, she will be the second black female

50 Cohen (2004) challenges scholars of black politics to take up the issue of deviance and non- conformers, which this project sets out to do. 51 Sean Sullivan. “Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) will retire.” The Washington Post. 17 December 2013. 52 Laura Silvius. “Harris May Be One-of-a-Kind Mayor. Chatham Patch. 12 November 2011. http://chatham.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/spotlight-on-the-borough-s-mayor-elect (accessed April 15, 2014). 53 In 2010, two of the four Republicans in the D.C. City Council race were black gay men. See: P.J. Orvetti. “Black, Gay, and…Republican?” NBC Washington. 14 October 2010. http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/politics/Black-Gay-and-Republican-104388114.html (accessed April 10, 2014). 95

mayor to lead D.C., and will join neighboring mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, to be the second African American female mayor of one of the 100 largest U.S. cities.

For these reasons, this chapter addresses an unexplored question about black political behavior, with a focus on atypical or stereotype disconfirming black elected officials.

To do accomplish the goals of addressing typical versus atypical black politicians, I rely on data generated from a non-representative, population-based survey experiment of voting- eligible black Americans. Participants were exposed to a fabricated news story that detailed the alleged wrongdoings (i.e., bribery) of fictitious black elected official who was male or female, Democrat or Republican, or gay or of non-specified sexual orientation (i.e., straight).

The remainder of this chapter is divided in three sections. First, I will demonstrate how theories of subgroups and subtypes might facilitate backlash against stereotype disconfirming elected officials. Second, I provide a more specific overview of the argument, with specific hypotheses. Third, I will test the hypotheses that gender subgroups and partisan and sexual orientation subtypes are cues that backlash. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for past and future research.

Model of Subgroups and Subtypes

In discussing whether there are differences in how black voters evaluate typical and atypical black elected officials, I depart from a notable body of literature that has long treated race as a master status, i.e., the primary identifying characteristic of an individual. The problem with this approach, however, is that an individual can have multiple, relevant identities. Thus, one way to appreciate this potential for within group stratification, and its consequences, is to understand two distinct processes identified by social psychologists as subgrouping and subtyping (for a review, see Hewstone and Richards 2001), a means of ingroup differentiation. For example, a subgroup is a cluster of individuals who are similar to the group on an identity attribute like race, but are different in another way such as gender.

In this regard, subgroups offer variability among group member. Similarly, a subtype is also a narrower, specific mental categorization of people (for a review, see Linville and Fischer

2010); however, it is distinguished from a subtype by its categorization of members who disconfirm the general stereotype of the group.

Examining subgrouping and subtyping is unlike most other inquiries into prejudice and discrimination, insofar as it exposes the consequences of group heterogeneity, the barriers to stereotype change (Maurer et al. 1995; Park et al. 2000), and the extent to which discrimination occurs within different social identity groups as a function of subgrouping or subtyping. For example, in evaluating gender subgroups and intergroup bias within sexes,

Vonk and Olde-Minnikhof (1998) find that both men and women tended to be more prejudiced against members of their same gender group, and less toward opposite sex targets, if their gender ingroup member was not a part of the same subgroup (e.g., career

women vs. housewives). This tendency to sort ingroup members is generally consistent with the literature, but its lower scales of differentiation highlight a barrier to racial or ethnic cohesion, as is the case with Latinos whose subgroup identity is a function of their nationality (see, e.g., Huddy and Virtanen).

Even so, it is not always the case that subgrouping will facilitate ingroup (or, outgroup) discrimination or differentiation. The process of subtyping, however, might be more consequential because of the effects of exclusion. To be sure, Richards and Hewstone

(2001) write, in reference to subtyping, that “…atypical individuals are sectioned off from the overall stereotype of the group and seen as exception to the rule, whereas with subgrouping, subgroups remain included with the superordinate group” (p. 53). For this reason, there is some irony inherent in subtyping; for example, subtypes can be as innocuous as “black businessman” (McCabe and Brannon 2004), a label that is perceived to be antithetical to the stereotype of a welfare dependent African Americans. But, because whites believe that the “black businessman” disconfirms the welfare stereotype, he is categorized in a way that identifies him as “not like them.” In practice, this means that the stereotype of the group persists while the businessman is effectively “othered.” This of course happens within the group, too, when a target is not seen to be “like us.” This occurs, as we will see, as a result of expectancy violations, i.e., deviance from the group’s norms.

Race and Gender Subgroups

All children born into this world are cross-categorized at birth, assigned a gender and a racial identity. Indeed, in many cases, these labels structure our social experiences, the most consequential of which are the opportunities that are available to us. That race and gender are inevitable features of our social identities is clear, and, yet, their intersection has received little attention in the study of political behavior (see Davis 2011 for critique of single identity measures). There is a large and well-established body of work has long examined the challenges of race and politics, for example, and a growing mass of research that has taken on the task of considering the effects of gender in politics. But, what about those who are, say, black and female? How do they fare in the political process? How do voters navigate race and gender simultaneously (for a discussion, see Gay and Tate 1998; Simien 2005)?

This question of race and gender subgrouping is important, though it has received little attention in the domain of electoral politics.54 In the main, cognitive parsimony privileges meta-group labels, such as being black or being a woman. The consequence of this is that our understanding of cross categorization, e.g., being a black woman, is undermined.

In a very real sense, in fact, ignoring these subgroupings potentially mask the nature prejudicial attitudes. For example, McConnaughy and White (2011) demonstrate that, while race is central to the construction of certain stereotypes, those stereotypes are gendered in their content. In other words, “the category of “black” essentially captures stereotypical

54 To be fair, a growing body of research is focusing on the experience of black female candidates and legislators. 99

attributions of black men” (p. 11).55 This means, in effect, that subgroups are non-trivial in the how we think about the meta-categories of race and gender.

This is consistent with conventional understandings of gender-based privilege, and, I argue, extends to political representation as well. As an example, consider that there are only sixteen African American women serving in the 113th Congress, compared to twenty-seven

African American men. What’s more, of the top twenty black mayors of cities with populations of 50,000 in 2014, only one was a black woman – thirteen were black men. For this reason, it is realistic to conclude that the category “black politician” is also gendered in a manner that is most assuredly means black men. After all, the standard gender for politicians is male, and all standards that are constructed in the image of that stereotype reinforce social dominance of male privilege. Thus, some voters are reluctant to vote for politicians who do not fit in that traditional image of what might be considered normative political leadership, the consequence of which has been bias against female (see, e.g., Brown et al. 1993;

McDermott 1998; Dolan 1997) and minority political candidates.56

If men are preferred to women in elected office, and whites are preferred over blacks, then it would seem that African American female elected officials are perhaps the enduring symbol of a political underdog. To understand the complexity of gender, race in the electoral context, consider Smooth’s (2006) comparative analysis of Carolyn Mosley

Braun and Al Sharpton, both of whom are African American, and both of whom ran for the

Democratic Party’s nomination for U.S. president during the 2004 election. “In the field of

Democratic contenders,” Smooth writes, “Moseley Braun’s political record was among the

55 In general, white Americans evaluated black men as being more violent, more promiscuous, less intelligent, and less nurturing compared to other subgroups (i.e., white men, white women, black women). 56 To be fair, the evidence about gender-based discrimination in voting is mixed; some research suggests that voters are not as reluctant to vote for a female candidate. 100

most stellar” (p. 124). For example, she had served in the Illinois State Legislature, was the first African American woman elected to the United States Senate, and later served as U.S.

Ambassador to New Zealand. In contrast, Sharpton, a reverend and civil rights activist, had never been elected or appointed to political office. Yet, unlike Braun, Sharpton was perceived as the more legitimate candidate, and benefited from a kind of media celebrity that sustained his campaign. The same consideration was not extended to the former senator from Illinois, the only woman in the race, who had been largely ignored. In South Carolina, for example, only 4 percent of likely black voters favored Braun compared to Al Sharpton’s

15 percent.57

Subtypes and Stigma

I turn now to issues of ingroup discrimination arising from subtyping. First, however, I discuss what is meant by stigma and deviance. These basic categorization processes are important to the understanding the potential exclusion and sanctioning of subtypes. In its simplest form, deviance is a social norm violation that is often subject to social sanctions (Henry 2009, p. 1). In general, deviance is a result of behavioral departures from what is expected or acceptable from members of groups. Stigma, on the other hand, is the result of undesirable attributes – physical, mental, or behavioral – that are “incongruous with our stereotype of what a given type of individual should be” (Goffman 1963, p. 3). A deviant, then, can be stigmatized precisely because of their deviance. These two expressions are important to subtyping, at least in the interest of this chapter, because both are concerned with departures from standards of normality. If this is the case, I argue that black

57 Center for the People & the Press. “Primary Preview: Surveys in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina,” Pew Research Center, 8 December 2014, http://www.people-press.org/2003/12/08/primary- preview-surveys-in-iowa-new-hampshire-and-south-carolina/ (accessed May 7th, 2014). 101

Republicans and homosexuals are likely fit the criteria for deviants; that is, atypical to the race group and are thus stigmatized and subtyped. To illustrate, I provide a brief overview for why this is the case each of these subtypes in the following section.

Black Republicans

In contemporary American politics, to be a black voter often means being a loyal supporter of the Democratic Party (see, e.g., Walton and Smith 2010). For example, both high levels of party identification, as seen in the experimental data displayed in Figure 4.1, as well as partisan vote choice among African Americans, have made African Americans a distinct voting bloc (Lewis-Beck et al. 2008). Unlike other groups, for instance, blacks are relatively consistent and homogenous in their support of the Democratic Party. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that voting for Democrats is, by most accounts, the stereotype that defines black political behavior. Those who do otherwise, i.e., voting for, supporting, or identifying as Republican, invite the ire of the group, and are often caricatured as “sellouts” or “uncle Toms”58 for violations of the group’s political norm (but see Kinder and

McConnaughy 2006). In some cases, the threat of reprisals from the group, or even the perceived potential for it, is sufficient to deter partisan deviance (see, e.g., White et. al 2014,

58 William Saletan. “The Black Republican Stereotype.” Slate. 7 February 2014. 102

forthcoming); even so, some partisan defectors persist.

Party ID

0 20 40 60 80 100 Democrat Independent Republican

Figure 4.1. % Party Identification, Experimental Sample

For this reason, I argue that black Republicans are, in a word, stigmatized. They occupy a complicated space in the political arena, and despite sometimes sharing a socially conservative ideology with many blacks, their partisan label is sometimes enough to repel most blacks (Kidd et al. 2007) from supporting them. The consequence of this is that, psychologically, they are subtyped apart from members who conform to the partisan stereotype. This means that they are excluded from the cognitive representation of the group

(e.g., black voters), and, in some cases, excluded from the superordinate group level altogether. Therefore, because black Republicans belong to this subtype, they do not fully benefit from the protection of the group.

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Gays and Lesbians

When Proposition 8, California’s gay marriage ban, passed in referenda in 2008, the

Washington Post attributed its defeat to black voters, 70 percent of whom, according to exit polls, had backed the ban.59 This conclusion roused the emotions of many, with several writers, academics, and pundits accusing the Post of scapegoating black people for the passage of anti-gay legislation. The validity of the Post’s conclusion notwithstanding, there is mixed evidence about whether blacks were more or less likely to support the ban (see

Abrajano 2010; Egan and Sherrill 2009). If it were true that a large proportion of blacks did indeed support of the ban, then many writers were prepared to explain it away by pointing out blacks’ high level of religiosity. After all, African Americans are the most religious of racial group in the United States;60 they are often just as conservative as some Republicans on moral issues,61 and, by most accounts, they are in fact less supportive than whites of same-sex marriage.62

This point received varying attention, but, in total, it failed to sound the alarm about one underlying implication for black social and political behavior. Cathy Cohen raises this point in her book, Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics, in which she highlights the failure of the black community in responding to the needs of its marginalized

59 Karl Vick and Ashley Surdin. “Most of California’s Black Voters Backed Gay Marriage Ban. The Washington Post. 7 November 2008. 60 Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project. “Blacks are the Most Religious Americans,” Pew Research Center, 3 November 2008, http://religions.pewforum.org/reports, (accessed May 7th, 2014). 61 Gallup. “Blacks as Conservative as Republicans on Some Moral Issues, 3 December 2008, http://www.gallup.com/poll/112807/blacks-conservative-republicans-some-moral-issues.aspx, (accessed May 7th, 2014). 62 Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project, “Changing Attitudes on Gay Marriage,” Pew Research Center, March 2014, http://features.pewforum.org/same-sex-marriage-attitudes/slide6.php, (accessed May 7th, 2014). 104

ingroup members, including gays, lesbians, and especially those affected by HIV/AIDS. The stigma associated with each these identities, she contends, renders these subpopulations invisible in the agenda setting process. In a very real way, misconceptions about homosexuality and HIV, i.e., sexual deviance, put gays, lesbians, and those infected outside the boundaries of protected blackness. This may seem like the most extreme case of marginalization, with no real bearing on gay or lesbian political candidates. However, misconceptions about homosexuality, and religious opposition to it, are no less relevant to how blacks might still perceive black, gay candidates.63

Hypotheses

The first goal of this experiment is to examine the impact of gender on judgments of black male and black female politicians following allegations of misconduct. In particular, I will assess whether black female politicians are judged more harshly than their black male counterpart. I expect that when same-race politicians are compared, there will be differences between the gender subgroups (i.e., black men vs. black women). In considering the gender content of the stereotype of “black politician,” I offer two competing hypotheses about black political behavior:

Hypotheses 1a: African-Americans will be more punitive in evaluations of a black female politician following a transgression than a black male politician following a transgression.

Hypotheses 1b: African-Americans will be less punitive in evaluations of a black female politician following a transgression than a black male politician following a transgression.

63 To be fair, attitudes toward homosexuality are changing among African Americans; however, there is still a stigma attached to this particular identity. 105

The first hypothesis follows from Russell-Brown’s (2006) contention that black women do not benefit from what she calls “black protectionism,” – that is, “the cloak of racial support readily provided to prominent blacks accused of wrongdoing” (p. 7). Like

Smooth (2006), Russell-Brown recounts examples of prominent African American women who, unlike their male counterparts, received little-to-no support from the black community following their alleged transgressions. The alternative, however, is that voters will actually be less harsh toward the female transgressors precisely because she does not represent the stereotypical politician. For example, in examining assimilation and contrast effects following scandal, Schwartz and Bless (1992) find that, on the one hand, when participants are primed to think about politicians accused of impropriety, they evaluate the global category of

“politician” negatively. On the hand, if asked to evaluate a specific politician, one not involved in a scandal, a temporary subgroup is formed, in judgments of trust increases.

These kinds of contrasts effects may extend to race and gender subgroupings as well, in part because most media depiction of scandals involving black politicians are involving black male politicians.

The second goal of this experiment is to examine the impact of partisanship of black politicians (male and female) following allegations of misconduct. First, I test whether there are differences in how black Republicans are judged compared to black Democrats? In general, I expect black Republicans, whose partisan deviance poses a threat to the partisan cohesion of the group, will be subtyped and thus excluded from the group’s full protection

(see, e.g., Parks-Stamm). In short the following hypothesis will be tested about partisanship:

Hypothesis 3: African Americans will be more punitive in evaluations of a black Republican following a transgression than a black Democrat following a transgression.

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What’s more, because I previously expressed the importance of considering race and gender in tandem, I also examine the joint effects of gender and partisanship in evaluative judgments. Given what I have outlined about subtypes and subgroups above, I expect to see a racial hierarchy in evaluations emerge, with black male Democrats being punished the least and black female Republicans being punished the most (on partisanship conditioning gender bias for women, see Dolan 2007).64

The third goal of this experiment is to examine the impact of sexual orientation of black politicians (male and female) following allegations of misconduct. Are straight politicians judged differently than those identified as gay? I expect to see difference along the lines of sexual orientation, with evaluations favoring straight politicians. Therefore, I hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 4: African-Americans will be more punitive in evaluations of a black gay/lesbian elected officials following a transgression than a straight, black politician following a transgression.

As with partisanship, I include gender as a factor, with the expectation that the sex of the participant, as well as that of the politician, will have an effect on evaluations following allegations of impropriety. I do this for two reasons: First, as Kite and Whitley (1998) note, heterosexual men generally hold more negative attitudes toward homosexuality than do heterosexual women; second, they continue in that review, because men are more likely to sexualize women, lesbianism is seen as more erotic and, by extension, more acceptable. Last,

I also expect support for gay rights to condition support for gay/lesbian politicians.

64 This is an auxiliary hypothesis, which will not be formally tested. 107

Method

The experiment that follows was designed to examine judgments of elected officials following allegations of misconduct. In this study, the primary goal is to compare reactions to black politicians who are a part of subgroups (e.g., gender) or subtypes (Republicans), meaning that they are cross-categorized (see, e.g., Stangor et al. 1992) on the basis of multiple social identities, including race. To do this, eight hundred and seventy-four African

Americans participants were introduced to a fabricated New York Times article about a scandal involving a member of a city council (Appendix H). There were eight conditions, corresponding to the 2 (sex of politician: male v female) X 2 (partisanship of politician:

Democrat v Republican) X 2 (sexual orientation of politician: straight v gay) between- subjects design.

Participants

Eight hundred and seventy-four participants were recruited to answer a series of questions from a web-based survey experiment facilitated by Qualtrics Labs in March 2014.

The sample is composed exclusively of African Americans, and, because of this specific characteristic, is neither random nor representative. Eligibility (e.g., being African American) and inclusion criterion (e.g., voting eligible) were established a priori. Table 4.1 displays the demographic characteristics of the sample, which is balanced between men and women.

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Observations (n) 874

Sex Male 436 Female 438

Age (mean) 44

Party Identification (%) Strong Democrat 50 Weak Democrat 12 Leaning Democrat 12 Independent 20 Leaning Republican 2 Weak Republican 2 Strong Republican 2

Note: % entries are rounded to the nearest whole number, and therefore may not sum to 100.

Table 4.1. Demographic Characteristics of Full Sample

Procedure

Participants began by answering a series of questions about their demographic characteristics, including age, income, and partisanship. Inclusion criteria was built into the experiment, such that respondents who were not eligible to vote in the United States or who did not identify as black/African American, were disqualified from participating in the remainder of the survey. Following the demographic profile, and prior to the manipulation, participants were also asked the extent to which they agreed (on a 5-point scale) with a series

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of attitudinal statements, four of which were used to measure general tolerance of modern moral standards (Conover and Feldman 1985).

Next, participants were randomly assigned to one-of-eight experimental conditions, each of which was represented by a fabricated article in The New York Times. It featured an

African American member of a city council who had been “accused of lying to a district attorney about taking bribes in exchange for municipal contracts” (see Appendix H). Unlike

Chapter 3, the treatment focused solely on the more consequential of political transgression, an incident involving abuse of power. Moreover, an important departure from Chapter 3 is that race is held constant, such that the politician is always black. Further, they are now described with additional identity attributes, varied to include some combination of party ID, gender, or sexual orientation. Table 4.2 shows how each condition is arranged, and displays number of cases for each in the right column.

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Conditions Observations Black, Male 109 Black, Female 109 Black, Male, Democrat 110 Black, Female, Democrat 107 Black, Male, Republican 109 Black, Female, Republican 110 Black, Male, Gay 110 Black, Female, Gay 110 Total 874

Table 4.2. Observations, by Experimental Condition

Immediately following the article, participants were asked recall information about the manipulations. Because it was important that participants recognize the additional identity attributes, they were filtered out in the sampling process if they did not accurately identify the information from their respective condition. For example, in the condition in which the councilperson was represented as gay, participants had to correctly answer a question about the sexual orientation of the member in order to continue. In short, these manipulation checks ensure the quality of these data, such that all but two participants accurately identified the scandal (bribery) discussed in the article.65

Measures

Table 4.3 displays the dependent variables of interest for both experiments, most of which have been adapted from Weiner (1995). Together, they measured trait perception, negative emotional reaction, questions about accountability, and retaliatory punishment in response to the alleged misconduct. The answers to the corresponding questions (see

65 These participants were dropped from the sample. 111

Appendix I) were originally scaled to range form 0 to 10, but were standardized to range from 0 to 1. Note, too, that for the purposes of the discussion that follows, punishment is broadly defined to mean negative evaluations on any of these variables. However, when referring to the “punishment” variable, I mean to distinguish retaliatory punishment distributed to the transgressor in response the transgression.

Standard Name of Variable Mean Deviation

Seriousness .88 .17 Representativeness .36 .29 Truthful .61 .22 Competent .59 .26 Honest .38 .23 Moral .37 .23 Trustworthy .35 .24

Guilty .58 .24 Target .41 .27 Control .77 .26 Responsibility .68 .27 Blameworthy .62 .26 Embarrassed .55 .33 Forgive .55 .29 Sympathy .33 .27 Angry .66 .28 Punishment .62 .24 Electability .28 .27 Note: Means are standardized to range from 0 to 1.

Table 4.3. Descriptive Statistics of Variables

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Results

The results are divided into several sections. First, I begin by considering the perceived seriousness of the accusations faced by the fictitious mayors. Second, I examine the impact of subgroups, i.e., race and gender, on trait perceptions, negative emotional reactions, judgments of accountability, and retaliatory punishment. Third, I test the hypotheses concerning subtyping, beginning with partisanship and ending with sexual orientation.

Seriousness of Accusations

In general, the mean judgment of seriousness was fairly high (M = .88) across each of the conditions. This suggests that the manipulations had the expected effects on perceptions of seriousness, such that each of scandal conditions produced high judgments.

Gender Subgroups

Table 4.4 displays data that compare how participants judged the black councilwoman condition in relation to the black councilman condition, both of whom were said to have lied about taking bribes in exchange for municipal contracts. Are there differences in response based on the gender of the politician? To answer this, recall, first, that it has already been established that both black men and black women occupy a particular subgroup of the larger racial (i.e., black) category, one created as a function of gender. Even so, it merits repeating that these subgroups do not necessarily pose a threat to the cohesiveness of the group in the same way that subtypes might; but, because black men represent the stereotype for the category of politician, just as a woman might represent the stereotype of teacher, gender discrimination are likely to emerge along those lines.

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Councilwoman Councilman (N=109) (N=109) Difference Truthful .59 .64 .05+ Blame .56 .63 .07* Guilt .55 .60 .05+ Forgive .59 .55 .04+ Punish .56 .62 .08*

Table 4.4. Mean Evaluations, by Gender Subgroup

In Table 4.4, the comparisons reveal modest differences in how the gender subgroups for five of the sixteen variables. Overall, what is most striking is that the councilwoman is, on average, evaluated less harshly than the councilman. Specifically, they are more forgiving of Danielle Highton for the alleged transgression, t(216) = 1.35, p = .09, d =

.18; they believe that she is less guilty of the wrongdoing, t(216) = -1.38, p = .08, d = -.20, and less worthy of blame for the incident, t(216) = -2.13, p = .02, d = -.28, and, ultimately, penalize her less, t(216) = -1.91, p = .03, d = -.26, than they do Daniel Highton, the black councilman. In examining the differences in means, there is a clear difference in how the gender subgroups are punished, with the councilman bearing the greatest of the penalties.

This is not surprising if you accept, as I have described earlier, that the cognitive representation of a black politician includes, most likely, the image of a black male.

Therefore, black male politicians may be more easily cast as deviants than black female politicians.

If this is the case, then discrimination should be most pronounced within the in- subgroup (see, e.g., Vonk and Olde-Monnikhoe), such that men would be harsher toward the councilman. This can be tested by examining intergroup bias within the sexes or, put

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differently, in the context of gender subgroups. Let’s consider, as an example, the two variables that yielded the greatest difference in the evaluation of the male and female politician displayed in Table 4.4: blame and punishment. To illustrate, Figures 4.2 and 4.3 display these data with 95 percent confidence intervals. As expected, there is an in-subgroup difference, but it is mostly driven by how black males in the sample evaluate the black male politician. For example, the difference in the extent to which black men are willing to punish a councilman (M = .65) compared to the councilwoman (M = .53) is significantly different by approximately twelve points, t(89) = 2.19, p = .02, d = .46. This is true of attributions of blame, too, with black men finding the councilman (M = .66) more blameworthy than the councilwoman (M =. 54), t(89) =2.40, p = .01, d = 50. Interestingly, black female participants do not seem to make such distinctions in judgments of blame or punishment, a pattern

consistent across the variables, except in expressions of sympathy (MCouncilwomen = .39 vs.

MCouncilman = .30), t(125) = 1.87, p = .03, d = .33.

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0.75 0.70 0.65 Councilman 0.60 Counciilman Councilwoman 0.55 Councilwoman 0.50 0.45 Mean Evaluation Evaluation Mean 0.40 Black Men Black Women

Sex of Participant

Figure 4.2. Mean Judgment of Blame, by Gender Subgroup and Sex of Participant

0.75 0.70 Councilman 0.65 Councilman 0.60 Councilwoman

0.55 Councilwoman 0.50 0.45 Mean Evaluation Evaluation Mean 0.40 Black Men Black Women

Sex of Participant

Figure 4.3. Mean Judgment of Punishment, by Gender Subgroups and Sex of Participants

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Gender and Partisanship If it is true that black Republicans are disconfirming of the partisan stereotype that African Americans are Democrats, then a backlash effect should occur as a result of this expectancy violation. In other words, black participants should recognize black co-partisans (i.e., Democrats) portrayed in the experimental conditions as being more representative of people like them than black Republicans. And, indeed, they do. A two-way between-subjects ANOVA was conducted on a measure of representativeness, with the council member’s partisanship and their gender as factors. A significant main effect of partisanship, F(1, 432), = 8.89, p = .003, η2 = .02, on evaluations of representativeness was found. In general, participants’ evaluations of representativeness were higher for the black Democrats (M = .36) than for the black Republicans (M = .28), suggesting that the partisan subtype was seen as more atypical.

Likewise, the assumed atypicality of black Republicans makes those who bare the label especially vulnerable to backlash from the ingroup. Thus, blacks are more likely to judge the transgressions committed by black Republicans more harshly than the same transgression committed by a black Democrat. To illustrate this point, a series of judgments were analyzed in a two-way ANOVA, with the fictitious council member’s partisanship

(Democrat, Republican) and gender (male, female) manipulated. Because there are sixteen individual dependent variables of interest, for brevity, I only present those that yield significant effects. For example, a main effect of partisanship was found on judgments of morality, F(1 432) = 4.14, p = .04, η2 = .009, guilt, F(1, 432) = 3.05, p = .08, η2 = .007, honesty,

F(1, 432) = 3.21, p = .07, η2 = .007, responsibility, F(1, 432) = 6.93, p = .01, η2 = .02, and electability, F(1, 432) = 4.61, p = .03, η2 = .01.

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How do black participants respond to black Republicans accused of impropriety? In

general, they judged them as less moral (Mrep = .33 vs. Mdem = .38), more guilty of having committed the alleged transgression (Mrep = .63 vs. Mdem = .59), less honest (Mrep = .34 vs.

Mdem = .37), more responsible for their alleged misconduct (Mrep = .73 vs. Mdem = .66), and were generally less willing to support them electorally (Mrep = .23 vs. Mdem = .28) in comparison to the black Democrat. This is consistent with the expectation that, because of their stigmatized label, black Republicans, as a subtype of the group, would suffer higher penalties when they are linked to failure events like a scandal. However, despite the confirmatory nature of these findings, it is worth noting that the effect sizes are substantively small for all of the included variables. Further, there was no main effect for the gender of the councilperson, which suggests that, when it comes to punitive judgments, the cross categorization of gender and partisanship for blacks is mostly complicated by being a

Republican. The underpinnings of this partisan conflict are highlighted by Figure 4.4, which display clear and warmth in feelings about the Democratic Party, t(873) = 32.6 =, p = .0000.

Republican Party 26

Democratic Party 68

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Figure 4.4. Mean Feeling Thermometer Score, by Political Party

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Gender and Sexual Orientation Next, I examine whether sexual orientation has an effect on how black participants evaluate transgressions committed by a gay or lesbian elected official. First, the measure of representativeness was subjected to a between- subject factorial ANOVA, with the council member’s sexual orientation (gay, straight) and their gender (male, female) manipulated as factors.66 There was significant main effect of sexual orientation, F(1, 430), = 3.35, p = .07 effect, η2 = .008, such that the gay councilperson was judged as being less representative (M = .37) of people like the participant than the straight councilperson (M = .42). A closer look at the data reveals a difference in the sexual orientation of the male elected officials; that is, the gay councilman (M = .36) was judged as less being less representative than the straight councilman (M = .44), t(217) = 2.04, p < .05, d = .28.

How do black participants judge transgressions allegedly committed by a gay councilperson? To determine this, I use t-tests to compare the mean differences between two groups for each of the factors: gender and sexual orientation. In particular, I consider how participants in the gay politician conditions, compared to those in the straight condition, rated the target on a series of variables. Importantly, these comparisons were made between the same gender groups (i.e., gay councilman vs. straight councilman). In comparing participants in the two conditions, the anticipated results were obtained for several of the variables. For instance, the gay councilman was evaluated as less being less

truthful (Mgay = .57 vs. Mstraight = .64), t(217) = 2.35, p = .01, d = .32, less competent (Mgay =

.55 vs. Mstraight = .61), t(217) = 1.58, p = .06, d = .21. The gay councilman was also perceived as being less guilty of the alleged transgression than the (Mgay = .55 vs. Mstraight = .60), t(217)

66 To clarify, the gay councilperson conditions were compared to the gendered conditions in which sexuality was not mentioned. 119

= 1.48, p = .07, d = .20. There was only a differences between the gay (M = .35) and straight

(M = .42) councilwomen in the expressions of sympathy, t(217) = 1.90, p = .03, d = .26.

Gender and Attitudes toward Gay Rights In addition, because the literature suggests that there is a gender difference in attitudes toward homosexuality among heterosexuals, with straight men having more negative attitudes than straight women (Kite and Whitley 1998, p. 39), I examine participant judgments of the gay council members as a function of both gender and support for gay civil rights. First, the judgments were subjected to a three-way between-subject ANOVA, with participant’s gender (male, female), the council member’s gender (male, female) and their sexual orientation (gay, straight) as factors.

There is no overwhelming evidence of significant main or interactive effects including gender of the participant, with the exception of emotional reactions that do not include gay/lesbian members. Thus, a second factorial ANOVA was conducted on the same evaluations with the same independent variables, this time including support for gay rights as an additional factor. Support and opposition was measured by taking the composite of five attitudinal questions (5 point Likert scale) about (α = .91) the extent to which participants favored or opposed gay rights (e.g., same-sex adoption), then dividing by the median (med =

3.8), such that higher valued indicated support and lower values indicating opposition.

In Figure 4.5, we see a significant interaction of sexual orientation and support for gay rights on trust was found, F(1, 422) = 4.21, p = .04, η2 = .01. When the councilperson was represented as gay, regardless of gender, opponents of gay rights found the council member as less trustworthy (M = .33) than the supporters of gay rights (M = .41). Similar effects were found for judgments of morality, F(1, 422) = 9.65, p = .002, η2 = .02. A significant main effect of support for gay rights on forgiveness was found, F(1, 422) = 4.65,

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p = .03, η2 = .01, with supporters (M = .51) being generally less forgiving than opponents (M

= .60). This pattern holds when the sexual orientation x support for gay rights interaction is significant, such that, when the councilmember is gay, supporters (M = .53) are, again, less forgiving than opponents (M = .58). More complex interactions were found in judgments of anger and guilt. For instance, there was an interactive effect of preference, support for gay rights, and councilperson’s gender that found that opponents and supporters alike expressed greater anger at the gay politician if he was male, F(1, 422) = 3.39, p = .07, η2 = .01.

0.50

0.45

Trust 0.40

0.35

0.30 Straight Councilmember Gay Councilmember

Favor Gay Rights Oppose Gay Rights

Figure 4.5. Interactive Effects of Sexual Orientation on Trust, by Support for Gay Rights

Discussion

The main result of this study is that gender subgrouping and subtyping among black elected officials matters in the context of ingroup bias. In the case of subgrouping, the

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findings here depart from general research examining voters’ reactions to male and female elected officials, which offers, at best, a mixed and limited account of how gender and race intersect to affect the political behavior of African Americans. Even less is known about subtyped identities, such as voter responses to black Republicanism or an elected official’s sexuality. Therefore, the benefit of the present study is that it goes beyond the general election contexts insofar as it examines political scandals and the political consequences for those cross-categorized elected officials accused of them.

In general, the findings in this study suggest that decomposing the racial meta-group, i.e., black, into smaller but meaningful subcategories can change the nature of racial bias in political judgments following allegations of political misconduct. For example, the data indicate that African Americans were, all things being equal, harsher in their evaluation of a black councilman than a councilwoman accused of taking bribes in exchange for municipal contracts. These findings are in some ways consistent with, or at least similar to, the predictions about assimilation and contrast effects offered by Schwartz and Bless (1992). For example, because black men represent, as I argue, the stereotype of a black politician, black male politicians are what come to mind when voters are asked to think about a black politician involved in a scandal. Consequently, and contrary to Russell-Brown (2005; 2006) and the findings of Smith et al. (2005), voters create a contrast between their perception of black political transgressor (i.e., black male) and the fictitious councilwoman. In terms of the behavior of black women in this experiment, there were no meaningful effects to suggest that they were engaging in any subgroup bias. In that regard, these findings are inconsistent with previous gender-race subgrouping studies (see, e.g., Philpot and Walton 2007;

Siegelman and Welch 1984), which find in-subgroup bias among black women in willingness

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to vote for black female candidates. One possible explanation is that the scandal condition reduces such bias.

The finding that partisan subtypes matter in evaluations of political scandals are important, too. However, for some, the conventional wisdom about black attitudes toward the Republican Party, as demonstrated in Figure 4.4, should be enough to adduce expectations about out-partisan derogation. That may be true, but is inconsistent with the limited previous research that indicates that among African Americans, even partisan deviants, like black Republicans, are seen as more trustworthy (Nunnally 2011) and more credible as a message source (Kuklinksi and Hurley 1994) than white Democrats. Still, black

Republicans bare a label that is highly stigmatized and atypical, the latter of which is made

clear by how representative each partisan group was judged (Mdem = .36 vs. Mrep = .28). If the underlying causal claim is true, the consequences for group politics are profound: yes, racial group bias exists, but not all members benefit equally. Thus, to deconstruct the narrative that, for blacks, race is an all-inclusive master status, it is important to remember that black

Republicans were judged them as less moral, more guilty, less honest, more responsible for their alleged misconduct, and were generally less electable compared to similarly embattled black Democrats.

Finally, on the question of subtyping sexual orientation, the results suggest that gay male councilmembers experienced similar backlash to black Republicans, such that they were evaluated as being less representative and perceived has having less favorable traits. These differences appeared restricted to the sex of the fictitious councilperson, consistent with Kite and Whitley (1998), who noted that gay men are often the target of the anti-gay attitudes people hold. Accordingly, in this study, the gay councilman was similarly derogated because

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of this sexuality attribute. However, there was no evidence that the sex of the participant negatively or positively affected political judgments toward gay politicians. What does matter was participants’ level of support for gay rights, as illustrated in Figure 4.5. Those who supported gay rights, for instance, were more favorable in assessing character traits and less harsh in their emotional responses.

In sum, more broadly, these findings should have implications for how scholars consider issues of race and politics. Notwithstanding the false prognostications about the

“Year of the Black Republican,” though several have gained national notoriety, the growing diversity of atypical black candidates will require research that account for the effects of this cross-categorization and its consequence on African American political psychology and behavior. For example, unlike previous chapters, this study finds more nuanced support for the Marques and Yzerbyt’s “black sheep effect,” which can be demonstrated by looking at within group differences.

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Chapter 5: Conclusion

The primary purpose of this project was to examine racial ingroup bias in political judgments within the context of failure events. In particular, I considered the extent to which same-race politicians were protected or punished when they were linked to negative political events. That racial ingroup bias influence political judgments and behavior is not novel, but few scholars have considered the persistence ingroup favoritism across negative circumstances. Thus, this project examines the effects of poor municipal performance and scandal, both defined as failure events, on judgments of candidates and elected officials. In

Chapter 2, for instance, I attempt to determine whether there is race-based assignment bias in judgment of accountability. That is, I compare how black and white participants assign blame and responsibility to a black incumbent or a white incumbent mayor who governs over a poorly performing city. In a departure from the concerns about retrospective in the preceding analysis, Chapter 3 is concerned with evaluations of same-race politicians following allegations of sexual or financial impropriety. Finally, in Chapter 4, I consider how racial subgrouping and subtyping effect racial ingroup bias, with a focus on gender, partisanship, and sexual orientation.

This project underscores the importance of interrogating the dynamics of intragroup politics, particularly as it relates to social sanctioning. For blacks, a group that was woefully and deliberately underrepresented in political institutions, elections are an opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. The normative implications and substantive consequences of this increased representation are beyond the scope of this

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project, and have been adequately and contentiously explored elsewhere.67 Still, an important consideration for the literature is whether race-based bias can override democratic accountability. The goal of this project, then, was to explore the ways in which a shared racial identity might affect how voters evaluated politicians following failure events. In general, the data from all three empirical chapters support the notion that African Americans engage in less group sanctioning than their white counterparts. Again, this should not be taken to mean that black elected officials are absolved or otherwise vindicated for their failures; instead, it suggests that blacks rely on a different set of considerations when distributing punishment to untoward ingroup politicians. The traditional black sheep effect expected for whites, for instance, was the opposite for blacks.

The remainder of this chapter is divided in four sections. First, I offer a brief review the findings of chapters 2 through 4. Second, I discuss some the implications of these results, and, third, attempt to relate them to relevant, real-world analogues. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of the limitations of this project, and propose additional research on the intra-racial politics.

Review of Experimental Results

In chapter 2, I examined how blacks and white participants judge same-race politicians as a function of municipal performance. The goal of these analyses was to determine, first, the extent to which accountability attributions were biased by race following negative appraisals of a fictional city. In general, and consistent with expectations, the results confirmed that there were in fact notable racial differences in how accountability was

67 Carol M. Swain, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress (University Press of American, 2006). 130

assigned. For example, the data revealed that black participants discounted accountability judgments, such that the black incumbent was blamed less than the white incumbent for the negative condition of the city. However, among white participants, there were few-to-no racial differences in how they evaluated each of the incumbents. In general, these data suggest heightened levels of ingroup bias among only blacks, with whites displaying little discrimination in judgments. It is important to note, again, that these results do not mean that blacks absolve black politicians of responsibility; rather, ingroup politicians get the benefit of any doubt. A second goal was focused on the consequences of retrospective considerations on support for a black and white mayoral candidate. The data revealed that, for African American, the likelihood of supporting a black candidate decreased from 93 percent when the city was performing well, to 84 percent when the city was performing poorly with a black incumbent. In contrast, support for white candidates increased in the condition in which the city was performing poorly with a black incumbent, an increase from when it was performing well with a black incumbent.

Chapter 3 focuses on an alternative failure event: Political scandals. In particular, it examines racial ingroup bias in judgments of black and white elected officials following allegations of sexual or financial misconduct. In some sense, this chapter provides a more direct examination of the extent of group sanctioning of deviant ingroup members. To this end, this chapter is made up two experiments. The goal of the first study was to determine how trait perceptions, emotional reactions, and retaliatory punishment varied as a function of the (1) alleged transgression (i.e., sex or financial) and (2) the race of transgressor (i.e., black or white). The goal of the second study was to examine the effects of different political accounts, or explanations, on reducing negative evaluations. In the first study, the data

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generally confirmed the hypotheses that, for black participants, black elected officials would be evaluated less harsh than similarly scandalized white elected officials. These differences were driven by three factors: (1) scandal type, (2) race of mayor, and (3) race of participant.

That is, financial scandals were more consequential, which is consistent with previous research. Moreover, race matters, too, such that black mayors were evaluated less harsh than white mayors, and black participants were generally less harsh than white participants in their trait perceptions. Furthermore, in the second study, the data revealed some notable differences between the condition in which “no comment” was offered and the condition a counter-claim was offered, i.e., that the charges were “racially motivated.” In general, the data suggest that counter-claims were more effective than no comments on increasing positive trait perceptions. However, there were no differences between denials and counter- claims, which might suggest both are relatively effective compared to silence.

In view of blacks’ bias toward black elected officials demonstrated in the previous chapters, Chapter 4 was motivated to take on a different approach to understanding racial ingroup bias. For instance, from the analysis of how black Americans respond to same-race politicians in the first two empirical chapters, it would be too easy to conclude that all black politicians are cloaked in the group’s favor. This assumption of ingroup homogeneity, – that is, among black voters and black politicians – ignores meaningful and consequential variance within the group. Thus, in Chapter 4, I examine the effects of gender subgrouping, partisan subtyping, and subtyping by sexual orientation on the political judgments of cross- categorized African American elected officials. That is to say, I interrogated how political judgments changed as a function of additional identity attributes, such as gender, partisanship, and sexual orientation. If race alone was enough to adduce group protection,

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then these additional identities should be inconsequential. The results from this chapter illustrate that not all black politicians are treated equally following allegations of untoward behavior. In fact, black participants discriminate more against black Republicans than black

Democrats, and more against a black gay councilperson than someone without presumed to be straight.

Implications

If the underlying causal claims presented in previous chapters are to be believed, then the results may have several methodological and substantive implications for the study of political behavior. First, recall the general evidence from each chapter suggests that there is indeed racial bias among black voters, such that ingroup members are favored over outgroup members. This dissertation considers this bias in view of negative political events, or failure events, that should be consequential to a responsible electorate. By doing so, this research necessarily extends beyond simple vote choice and candidate evaluation. It is essential, in my view, to examine situations that go beyond the traditional campaign environment. These failure events, as a result, are a test of voter loyalty. Failure events provide a backdrop against which to determine the extent to which voters choose exit or loyalty when group members compromise the integrity of the group’s status.

In addition, these findings have important implications for democratic accountability. In particular, the current data suggest that African Americans engage in ingroup bias in a way that diminishes the liability of black elected officials. Hence, one conclusion that might be drawn from these findings is that black constituents do not hold black politicians accountable. This interpretation is not only incorrect but also inconsistent

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with what has been argued and evinced. Indeed, it represents a view that propagates a narrative in which African American are cast as unsophisticated or irresponsible voters.

There is of course a less cynical interpretation of the protective racial calculus: that is, that the race-based favoritism is motivated by directional goals and outcome, all of which are dependent on increased racial representation in political and social institutions. As a result, blacks are, on average, seem to be more willing to give same-race politicians the benefit of the doubt, as long as they perceive them to be vital to their well-being. I am sympathetic to this perspective, but it fails to answer one fundamental question: At what cost do some black

(or any, for that matter) voters maintain their electoral loyalty?68 This is a difficult question, but one worth considering.

Finally, in each of the empirical chapters, I have attempted to outline how experimental realism is achieved, by design, for each of the corresponding studies. However, as McDermott (2011, p. 35) notes, “it remains important to examine the extent to which the outcomes measured in a laboratory setting finds analogues in real-world contexts.” For this reason, the next section offers three separate examples of real-world events that parallel the kinds of failure events described in the preceding chapters. It is worth nothing that these examples are not meant to be exhaustive case studies, nor are their inclusion an attempt to make a case for increased external validity. Rather, they are included because they’re instructive overviews that, as real-world analogues, can, along with the corresponding chapters, provide additional insight to the implications of race-based bias following failure events.

68 To be clear, the data that I have provided suggests that blacks are willing to hold black politicians accountable, but, again, at a discounted rate when compared to white elected officials. However, as will be seen below, it is not difficult to find real-world cases in which an underperforming or scandal-tainted politician is able to maintain office.

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Real-world Analogues

To begin, I first relate the issues that I raised in Chapter 2 to recent events, circa

2013, in Detroit, Michigan. Second, I consider, briefly, the allegations of impropriety, related to Chapter 3, which have plagued the city government of Washington, D.C. Last, I conclude with a discussion of Sheila Dixon, the first black female mayor of Baltimore, Maryland, who resigned her office following an indictment on charges of embezzlement. In offering these examples, I also bring to bear recent public opinion data for each case.

Michael Duggan’s Detroit, MI. In Chapter 2, I demonstrated that judgments of accountability are discounted for black mayors governing poorly performing cities, but argued that, eventually, poor performance might lead African Americans to crossover, racially, in support of a white candidate. I began that chapter using Gary, Indiana as anecdote for my line of reasoning, but recent events in Detroit, Michigan offer a more contemporary example. Like Gary, Detroit is a majority-black American city (>80 percent), with a long and proud history of black political leadership. Economically, it was distressed, hosting the highest rate of unemployment among the fifty largest U.S. cities during the Great

Recession.69 And, to make matter worse, in 2013 it became the largest American city to file for bankruptcy.70 These municipal conditions far exceed those of the specious treatments that I employed in Chapter 2, but the issues are conceptually approximate and consistent with what I have called a failure event. Unlike Chapter 2, it is difficult to determine whether there was in racial bias prior to the collapse of the Motor City, but it is clear, as shown in

69 Local Area Unemployment Statistics. “Unemployment Rates for the 50 Largest Cities, 2010,,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/lau/lacilg10.htm (accessed April 28, 2014). 70 Monica Davey and Mary Williams Walsh. “Billions in Debt, Detroit Tumbles into Insolvency.” The New York Times. 18 July 2013. 135

Figure 5.1, that Detroit’s residents did not hold their elected officials in high esteem.71 It is worth nothing, then, ingroup bias does not always inoculate black politicians, as discussed previously.

Q: Overall, how would you rate the job that______is doing as ______- would you give him a positive rating of excellent of pretty good, or a negative rating of just fair or poor?

Positive Negative Undecided/Refused

3 % 1 % 4 %

75 % 85 % 86 %

22 % 14 % 10 % Rick Synder, as Governor Dave Bing, as Mayor of Detroit Detroit City Council

Figure 5.1. Survey on Detroit Mayor and Council Race General Election - Sept. 2013 (Source: The WZYZ-TV Detroit/EPIC-MRA)

If that is the case, then there are no doubt consequences for these failure events. In drawing on the case of Gary, Indiana, I also argued that poor performance could eventually lead African Americans to abandon any racially political loyalty. Indeed, the data in that chapter suggested that the likelihood of African Americans voting for a white candidate did in fact increase under negative conditions, but that probability was still less than choosing a

71 The data are from a poll featured by WXYZ Detroit, which were shared with me by the Chuck Stokes, Director of Public Affairs. The poll was conducted EPIC-MRA, a survey research firm, and had a sample size was 400, with 79 percent identifying as African American/black. 136

same-race candidate. In that regard, it is important to note that Detroit, like Gary, would elect a white candidate, Michael Duggan, after more than twenty-five years of a black mayoralty, to be its mayor.72 To make a causal claim about what motivated the election of

Duggan would be to overstate, without evidence, the exact nature of this relationship.

Nevertheless, what is clear is that Duggan bested Benny Napoleon, the black candidate, 55 percent to 45 percent, in a city that is overwhelmingly black.

Vincent Gray’s Washington, DC. Since 2012, the world of local politics in

Washington, D.C. has been disrupted by a string of ethics violations involving local city council members.73 Three councilmembers have since pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges, and, as of 2013, federal prosecutors were investigating possible campaign misconduct of D.C.’s mayor, Vincent C. Gray. Mayor Gray was accused of accepting illegal contributions during his campaign in 2010, and backing a scheme to provide financial backing to a third candidate with the explicit purpose of undermining the campaign of the incumbent-candidate Adrian M. Fenty. The case of Vincent Gray is a useful parallel to the issues discussed in Chapter 3. For example, consider the data displayed in Figure 5.3, which are drawn from a poll conducted by The Washington Post just prior to D.C.’s 2014 Democratic primary.74 Similar to the findings in Chapter 3 we saw that approximately 22 percent of blacks, compared to only 4 percent of whites, believed that federal authorities had unfairly

72 Matt Helms and Joe Guillen. “Mike Duggan defeats Benny Napoleon in Detroit mayoral race.” Detroit Free Press, 6 November 2013. 73 Austermuhle, Martin. “Scandal: A Primer on Misdeeds by D.C. Elected Officials.” The Washington Post. 11 June 2013. 74 “Washington Post D.C. Mayor Poll – March 2014,” The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/03/25/National- Politics/Polling/release_307.xml (accessed April 28, 2014). 137

targeted Gray.75 Second, 38 percent of blacks believed Gray to be honest and trustworthy, compared to 10 percent of whites.76 Even so, in the end, Gray would lose the Democratic primary to Mauriel Bowser, a black councilwoman, with a margin of 44 percent to 32 percent.77

Blacks Whites 81

49 38 22 10 4

Do you think Gray's campaign has Please tell me whether the Do you think Gray knew about been fairily or unfairly investigated following statement applies to the secret campaign, or do you by federal authories? Mayor Gray, or not: He is honest think he was unaware of it and trustworthy? happening?

Poll Question

Figure 5.2. Washington Post D.C. Mayor Poll - March 2014

Sheila Dixon’s Baltimore. In 1987, Sheila Dixon was elected to the City Council of Baltimore, Maryland, where she represented the city’s Fourth District. Nearly twenty years later, in 2007, she would take the oath of office to become the Baltimore’s first African

75 In the chapter 3, the mean for black participants who believed that the black mayor was unfairly targeted was .44 and .29 for whites. 76 This point differs some from the findings in Chapter 4, insofar as black women were more harsh of Gray in their perception of the traits honest and trustworthy; 53 percent said that he was not honest and trustworthy, while black men were evenly split: 44 percent to 44 percent. In chapter 4, we observed that black men were more punitive of in-subgroup elected officials (i.e., black men). 77 “D.C. Mayoral Primary Votes,” The Washington Post,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- tran/local/2014-dc-mayoral-primary-results/ (accessed April 30 2014). 138

American woman to serve as mayor. However, her tenure was cut short when, in 2009, she was brought up on several criminal charges, including felony theft, misappropriation of funds and misconduct in office.78 In 2010, Dixon was found guilty of what some thought to be the most egregious offense, using $600 worth of retail store gift cards that had been designated for poor families; she resigned as mayor of Baltimore in 2010.79 The case of

Sheila Dixon may be instructive in terms of understanding the effects of gender subgrouping, as seen in Chapter 4. Unlike Chapter 4, however, there is no appropriately comparable case, though Dixon has been likened to Marion Barry, D.C.’s perpetually delinquent politician. It is widely speculated that Dixon is setting the stage to run for mayor again in 2015. How will voters respond? If the findings in Chapter 4 foreshadow anything about Dixon’s possible second act in politics, it’s that she should not be counted out. That is because, as shown in the Sun Poll displayed in Figure 5.4, if Sheila Dixon were candidate for mayor again in 2015, 45 percent of blacks – and 17 percent of whites – indicated that they would consider supporting her.8081

78 Owens, Dana. (2009, November 12). Baltimore Mayor Faces Trial on Corruption Charges. Morning Edition. National Public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org 79 Nick Wing. “24 U.S. Mayors Who Prove We’re Also Better Than Canada At Electing Embarrassing Officials. The Huffington Post. 7 November 2013. 80 Scott Calvert. “Thank you, Sheila. Now don’t come back.” The Baltimore Sun. 28 August 2011. 81 OpinionWorks conducted the telephone survey of 742 likely Democratic primary voters from Aug. 22 through 24. It has a 3.6 percent margin of error. 139

Q: Looking ahead to 2015, if Sheila Dixon were a candidate for mayor again, would you consider supporting her, or would you not consider that?

4 % 16 % DK 39 % 79 % Would NOT consider that Would consider support her 45 % 17 % African Amrican White

Figure 5.3. Sun Poll of Likely Baltimore Voters in the Democratic Primary - August 2011

Limitations

Each chapter has provided some evidence that there is indeed racial ingroup bias across failure events. However, there are several limitations to the experimental data that I’ve reported here. First, in the absence of current and relevant survey data, experiments were used as a proxy to understand political judgments. The experimental method has been commonly criticized in the social sciences for its artificial interventions and, thus, is constrained external validity. In this regard, the “artificiality objection” (Webster 1971) would be apropos of this dissertation because of its use of hypothetical failure events, fake politicians, and college students (Chapter 2) to gauge voter judgments. Indeed, one way to assuage these concerns would be to pursue a mixed methods approach to examine the forenamed problem of ingroup bias, including case studies, [field] experiments, interviews, and surveys. I do not doubt that this project would have benefitted greatly from increased 140

methodological pluralism, particularly in Chapter 2, where I expect the greatest concerns about experimentation will be expressed.82

Nonetheless, the methodological strengths of this project include having large samples of African Americans (Chapters 3 and 4), employing experimental designs that are motivated by real-world analogues, and that are high on mundane realism. The sample size provided enough power to detect small effects and allowed for meaningful inferences to be made about race and political sanctioning, with care for the behaviors of both black and whites. In addition, as noted in the discussion of implications, each experiment mimics, to some extent, events that have occurred in real-time. That is to say, the hypothetical experimental designs used in this project have meaningful counterparts outside of the lab.

Further, it is difficult to experimentally reproduce real-world failure events or to be adequately prepared for when one might occur. For example, Chapter 2 would have benefitted from data collection when Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013 and when it subsequently elected (also in 2013) a white mayor; however, forecasting these kinds of events is uncommon, and difficult to manage with limited resources.83 The benefits of laboratory or population-based survey experiments, then, are that the researcher has the ability to minimize competing causal factors through control, randomization, and experimental manipulation in a manner that is perhaps more economical and time efficient than a field experiment. Moreover, in some sense, the hypothetical targets used in the preceding chapters may, in a way, offer a more robust case on the question of ingroup bias. In previous studies, for instance, researchers have drawn on the cases such of people like O.J. Simpson (Graham

82 There may be some resistance to the idea of using experimental methods to infer local-level behavior. 83 Likewise, it is similarly difficult to collect data on real-time scandal events; the timeframe of charges, indictments, and resignations are unknowable. For instance, it is important to point out that while data was being collected for Chapter 4, two scandal events involving black mayors occurred. 141

et al. 1997; Sommers and Ellsword 2000) or Charles Rangel (Adida et al. 2013), about whom, despite their transgression, people may have already preformed attitudes about because of their celebrity.

Future Research

The results of this dissertation suggest a number of future directions for research aimed at understanding intergroup and intragroup politics following failure events. In particular, from Chapter 2, additional research might examine how diffusion of responsibility affects judgments of accountability toward black mayors. Although municipal governments are undoubtedly constrained, and mayors are often responsible for their performance, the levels of attention given to higher levels of government might reduce the perceived role responsibility of mayors. In addition, future research might also consider the effects of political endorsements on encouraging racial crossover voting (i.e., voting for a white candidate). In the spirit of methodological diversity, future research might also integrate case studies, field experiments, and poll data from relevant elections to tell a fuller story about issues on the ground.

The research opportunities stemming from Chapter 3 are many. In particular, future research would do well to pay attention to issues of moral hypocrisy, to determine whether voters are more punitive of social evangelists who violate the very social norms they protest

(e.g., homosexuality). This line of research could include personal transgressions, such as drug abuse, which was omitted from the design of Chapter 3. Specifically, this line of research should seek to unpack social violations and the meaning of social sanctions for misconduct that is hypocritical but “victimless.” This issue is especially relevant at the time

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of this writing; readers might recall the 2013 episode involving Toronto mayor, Rob Ford, who refused to resign his post after it was discovered that he had used drugs while in office.

Many observers (wrongly) compared the incident to the one involving Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington, DC, in 1990.84 Another interesting opportunity for research extends the work done in Study 2 of this chapter; specifically, it would consider how effective allegations of reverse discrimination might work for white elected officials accused on transgressions. There is no clear parallel today in real-world politics, but it would be interesting to see if race becomes a galvanizing force among whites when accusations of reverse discrimination are made by a white elected official.

Finally, Chapter 4 encourages a number of directions for research interested in subgroup and subtyping as it relates to political judgments. First, additional disconfirming identities, such as atheism, should be examined. As I note in this chapter, African Americans are among the most religious racial groups in the United States. It stands to reason then that this expectancy violation is likely to have a powerful backlash effect. Further, in terms of methodological implications, the findings in Chapter 4 underscore the importance of thinking seriously about how racial groups are cross-categorized, and the effect that has on political behavior.

84 Months following the initial incident, a new video emerged of Ford, in 2014, smoking crack cocaine. He entered into a rehabilitation center for drug addiction. 143

Responding to Failure

The idea of accountability is deeply etched in the way we think about American democracy, yet how we respond to failure is fluid. If the idea of a responsible electorate is supposed to guarantee, or at least encourage, that politicians be rewarded or punished for their performance, then the empirical foundation of this dissertation may be troubling. After all, the racial differences in how blacks and whites respond to same-race politicians is apparent in each of chapter. There are at least two ways to interpret how voters respond to failure, but both are, in some regards, pessimistic. What’s more, in some ways they complicate how voters ought to attend to issues of democratic accountability.

In one view, the racial bias exhibited in the previous chapters may not at all be consequential. For example, in the final year of this project, as I concluded writing and data collection, there were many noteworthy events that made the issues of race and failure events all too real. In October of 2013, for instance, as the City of Detroit began its downward spiral into bankruptcy, and its former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, was sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison for racketeering, bribery, extortion, and tax crimes. Months later, in February of 2014, former mayor of New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin, was found guilty on charges that he had accepted bribes in exchange for city contracts. In March of 2014, mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, Patrick Cannon, resigned his office after an arrest related to federal corruption charges. In April of 2014, amid allegations of campaign fraud, mayor of

Washington, D.C., Vincent Gray, lost in the democratic primary. These failure events carried with them significant legal penalties, which far outweigh the political consequences that are associated with voters’ appraisal. In other words, it would be quite a feat if such

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transgressions, as the felonies they are, escaped penalty merely because African Americans exhibited some bias in favor of same-race politicians. Put differently, if an elected official is out of legal bounds, they will be punished in accordance to their fiduciary capacity.

This view of course bares little resemblance to what is meant by the parochial meaning of democratic accountability. Indeed, in another view, there may come a time when such bias can be detrimental to the democratic process. The general results from this dissertation are important for what they suggest about black political psychology and behavior following failure events: racial bias in political judgments. They take on additional significance when considering the possibility of bias disrupting judgments of accountability.

It is not clear from these findings when, or the extent to which, bias interferes with democratic accountability. There are certainly many anecdotal examples that observers of urban politics might point to, such as Ray Nagin and post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.

In that regard, voters ought to be more prudent, for it is ultimately their responsibility to guard against the corruption of democratic accountability.

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