Moral credentials and the 2020 democratic presidential primary: no evidence that endorsing female candidates licenses people to favor men

Giurge, Laura M. ORCID: 0000-0002-7974-391X, Lin, Eva Hsin-Lian and Effron, Daniel A. (2021) Moral credentials and the 2020 democratic presidential primary: no evidence that endorsing female candidates licenses people to favor men. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 95. ISSN 0022-1031

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Abstract

Endorsing Obama in 2008 licensed some Americans to favor Whites over Blacks––an example of moral self-licensing (Effron, Cameron, & Monin, 2009). Could endorsing a female presidential candidate in 2020–21 similarly license Americans to favor men at the expense of women? Two high-powered, pre-registered experiments found no evidence for this possibility. We manipulated whether Democrat participants had an opportunity to endorse a female Democratic candidate if she ran against a male candidate (i.e., Trump in Study 1, N = 2143; an anti-Trump Republican or independent candidate in Study 2, N = 2228). Then, participants read about a stereotypically masculine job and indicated whether they thought a man should fill it. Contrary to predictions, we found that endorsing a female Democrat did not increase participants' tendency to favor men over women for the job. We discuss implications for the robustness and generalizability of moral self-licensing.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-e...
Additional Information:	© 2021 Elsevier Inc.
Divisions:	Psychological and Behavioural Science
Subjects:	J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General) J Political Science > JK Political institutions (United States) H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Date Deposited:	27 May 2022 17:06
Last Modified:	29 Oct 2025 03:58
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/115231

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