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There's a Reason Many Voters Have Negative Views of Warren--But the Press Won't Tell You Why
By Peter Beinart in The Atlantic
These observations are factually correct. But they also help create a false narrative. Mentioning the right’s attacks on Warren plus her low approval ratings while citing her “very liberal record” and the controversy surrounding her alleged Native American heritage implies a causal relationship between these facts. Warren is a lefty who has made controversial ancestral claims. Ergo, Republicans attack her, and many Americans don’t like her very much.
But that equation is misleading. The better explanation for why Warren attracts disproportionate conservative criticism, and has disproportionately high disapproval ratings, has nothing to do with her progressive economic views or her dalliance with DNA testing. It’s that she’s a woman.
As I’ve noted before, women’s ambition provokes a far more negative reaction than men’s. For a 2010 article in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, two Yale professors, Victoria Brescoll and Tyler Okimoto, showed identical fictional biographies of two state senators—one male and one female—to participants in a study. When they added quotations to the biographies that characterized each as “ambitious” and possessing “a strong will to power,” the male state senator grew more popular. But the female state senator not only lost support among both women and men, but also provoked “moral outrage.”
The past decade of American politics has illustrated Brescoll and Okimoto’s findings again and again. During the 2012 campaign, Republicans attacked Nancy Pelosi in television commercials seven times as frequently as they attacked her Democratic Senate counterpart, Harry Reid. In 2016, the disparity was three to one. Pelosi’s detractors sometimes chalk up her unpopularity to her liberalism and her hometown of San Francisco. But Reid’s successor as the Democratic Senate leader, Charles Schumer, a liberal from Brooklyn, is far less unpopular than Pelosi—and far less targeted by the GOP.
But that equation is misleading. The better explanation for why Warren attracts disproportionate conservative criticism, and has disproportionately high disapproval ratings, has nothing to do with her progressive economic views or her dalliance with DNA testing. It’s that she’s a woman.
As I’ve noted before, women’s ambition provokes a far more negative reaction than men’s. For a 2010 article in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, two Yale professors, Victoria Brescoll and Tyler Okimoto, showed identical fictional biographies of two state senators—one male and one female—to participants in a study. When they added quotations to the biographies that characterized each as “ambitious” and possessing “a strong will to power,” the male state senator grew more popular. But the female state senator not only lost support among both women and men, but also provoked “moral outrage.”
The past decade of American politics has illustrated Brescoll and Okimoto’s findings again and again. During the 2012 campaign, Republicans attacked Nancy Pelosi in television commercials seven times as frequently as they attacked her Democratic Senate counterpart, Harry Reid. In 2016, the disparity was three to one. Pelosi’s detractors sometimes chalk up her unpopularity to her liberalism and her hometown of San Francisco. But Reid’s successor as the Democratic Senate leader, Charles Schumer, a liberal from Brooklyn, is far less unpopular than Pelosi—and far less targeted by the GOP.
Short summary: Yes, it's the misogyny. On all sides.
Posted in GD because hell, it ain't exactly news, is it.
wearily,
Bright
4 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's just the same old shit.
I'm glad you posted this article from The Atlantic. I hadn't really realized just how pervasive this view is. And oh my gawd, it sucks.
