Research Interests
My research is interdisciplinary in nature, focusing on both political science and sociology. Human beings and their attitudes, opinions and beliefs are part of every facet of politics. Therefore, it is important to understand how these factors affect the political world. Thematically, I am interested in understanding if attitudes about female politicians impact a woman’s ability to win elections in the United States and Worldwide.
Current Research
My current research agenda focuses on the impact that gender stereotypes have on the evaluations and electability of women in U.S. elections. My dissertation, Gender and Party Stereotypes in the Evaluation of U.S. Senate Candidates, examines how party identification and gender stereotypes interact in the evaluation of candidates. Researchers in political science have looked at how partisan stereotypes and gender stereotypes affect candidate evaluations. However, most of this research examines each stereotype in isolation. There has been very little research on how a candidate’s gender and party membership simultaneously affect the evaluation of the candidate. My dissertation tries to overcome this deficiency by utilizing a survey experiment that measures male and female candidate evaluations for both the republican and democratic parties.
For my dissertation, I created an original survey experiment that was administered to over three hundred and fifty students at the University of Tennessee. The students received one of two treatment packets that contained a candidate vignette and a questionnaire. The vignettes were party specific and the gender of the candidate was randomly distributed. The questionnaire asked students some basic demographic questions, and then asked them to rate the candidate’s overall competency / electability, personality traits, ideology, and issue competency based on the vignette. The data allowed me to discern how candidates are rated differently based on party membership and/or gender.
Future Research
In the future I would like to build on the work from my dissertation and to expand my focus on gender. As an extension to the work in my dissertation, I plan to explore whether evaluations of female candidates are impacted by a respondents current and previous experience with women as elected officials. I would like to expand my focus on gender by exploring other obstacles women face in achieving gender parity on government; as well as studying how female candidates in the U.S. compare to female candidates around the world in regards to gender stereotyping.
I also believe that the measures utilized to measure gender stereotypes need to be improved. Since subjective language can play an important role in the analysis of gender stereotyping, it is important that the field try to improve upon its use of objective rating scales. The shifting standards model in social psychology posits that it may be possible that female candidates are being judged relative to within-group standards of stereotyped traits. Therefore, a term such as competent could mean something very different for a male candidate than it does for a female candidate.
Current Research
My current research agenda focuses on the impact that gender stereotypes have on the evaluations and electability of women in U.S. elections. My dissertation, Gender and Party Stereotypes in the Evaluation of U.S. Senate Candidates, examines how party identification and gender stereotypes interact in the evaluation of candidates. Researchers in political science have looked at how partisan stereotypes and gender stereotypes affect candidate evaluations. However, most of this research examines each stereotype in isolation. There has been very little research on how a candidate’s gender and party membership simultaneously affect the evaluation of the candidate. My dissertation tries to overcome this deficiency by utilizing a survey experiment that measures male and female candidate evaluations for both the republican and democratic parties.
For my dissertation, I created an original survey experiment that was administered to over three hundred and fifty students at the University of Tennessee. The students received one of two treatment packets that contained a candidate vignette and a questionnaire. The vignettes were party specific and the gender of the candidate was randomly distributed. The questionnaire asked students some basic demographic questions, and then asked them to rate the candidate’s overall competency / electability, personality traits, ideology, and issue competency based on the vignette. The data allowed me to discern how candidates are rated differently based on party membership and/or gender.
Future Research
In the future I would like to build on the work from my dissertation and to expand my focus on gender. As an extension to the work in my dissertation, I plan to explore whether evaluations of female candidates are impacted by a respondents current and previous experience with women as elected officials. I would like to expand my focus on gender by exploring other obstacles women face in achieving gender parity on government; as well as studying how female candidates in the U.S. compare to female candidates around the world in regards to gender stereotyping.
I also believe that the measures utilized to measure gender stereotypes need to be improved. Since subjective language can play an important role in the analysis of gender stereotyping, it is important that the field try to improve upon its use of objective rating scales. The shifting standards model in social psychology posits that it may be possible that female candidates are being judged relative to within-group standards of stereotyped traits. Therefore, a term such as competent could mean something very different for a male candidate than it does for a female candidate.