Alegeri locale 2012

Morality versus competence in social perception of political candidates
 

ALINA DUDUCIUC
[„Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University]

Abstract:
Over the past 50 years, the experimental social psychology has shown that social actors organize their impressions of their interaction partners around two dimensions: competence and social-morality. Based on recent theoretical and experimental knowledge on the perception of candidates, we conduct two experiments (N=88) analyzing the extent to which these features, central in the perception of political actors, namely morality and competence, are potential determinants of the voting behaviour. The data of the research emphasized that individuals are more sensitive to negative information concerning the morality of politicians than their skills.

Keywords: social perception; morality; competence; voting behavior

The public debate about possible winners of election campaigns is usually dominated by predictions made on the basis of quantitative data provided by the public opinion polls. The role of the ways in which voters form an impression about the characteristics and behaviours of candidates was neglected as a possible determinant of the voting behaviour. From Solomon Asch (1946), the founder of social cognition studies, a well-defined tradition of research in social psychology has shown that social actors organize their impressions of their interaction partners around two dimensions: the social traits they have („warm”, „moral”, „friendly”, „honest”) and the way they are in terms of intellectual traits („intelligent”, „dumb”, „smart”, „creative”, „efficient”). These two dimensions - i.e. social and networking skills and intellectual and creative performances (competences) - have been raised by the majority of subjects in experiments when they were tasked with describing the characteristics of potential political candidates. However, voters often assign characteristics such as honesty and competence when asked to choose from a list of dominant personality characteristics of certain political leaders. The evolutionist explanation is that the source is motivated to judge the target (in this case the political candidate) primarily in terms of social features, and subsequently based on the skills the target would hold, because the social actors are first interested in the needs of survival, coping, i.e. how „friendly”, „generous” „trustworthy” and „honest” an interaction partner is with others and implicitly with the source. Then judgements related to the value and to the target’s skills are issued, namely how smart, creative and effective they will be.

Amy C. Cuddy, Susan T. Fiske and Peter Glick (2008) in a compendium of experimental social psychology, have argued on all the dimensions of social perception, respectively the pro-social behaviour and competence, proving and showing that cognitively, people are more sensitive to processing information about the social characteristics of the target than the information about their skills¹. However, the researchers have shown that targets perceived as competitive are considered „unfriendly”, and conversely, non-competitive targets are perceived as „friendly”.

Bogdan Wojciszke (2005) asked experiment subjects to recall real episodes of their personal life after which they judged in evaluative terms the behaviour of other individuals with whom they interacted frequently. The study was to distinguish the extent to which the competence and the quality of being friendly are central features integrated in the person’s perception. The content analysis of 1,000 such episodes showed that three quarters (75%) of subjects had a tendency to judge others’ actions in terms of prosocial behaviour, rather than in terms of competence². Therefore, in the overall perception of a political candidate, voters make assumptions based on how political leaders interact with their social environment (features which we call prosocial) and about the politicians’ self (how competitive they are).

Morality and competence as predictors of the voting behaviour

Even if the researches concerning the voting behaviour have invoked some causes related to the economic and political context or issues and ideologies, the candidates’ evaluations are based on the physical appearance and traits, characteristics ascribed to them. Social thinking draws a conclusion on both the moral and competence characteristics of the social actor, because in a representative democracy, the politician acting in favour of voters is socially desirable, so they are perceived as being trustworthy³. Hence the idea that social feature is primordial and central in the perception of politicians, the absence or presence thereof being decisive upon expressing the vote.

In experimental social psychology, the features seen on morality and competence involved separated clusters of traits in the perception of leaders, and these clusters define two styles of leadership: the leader oriented on interpersonal relationships (relation-oriented) and the leader oriented on tasks (task-oriented). The studies performed with individuals from different cultures around the world (Western Europe, North American, Asian, Hebrew, Latin American) also indicated that the perception of political leaders based on the qualities of morality, respectively competence, is universal, these features being a predictor of negative or positive attitudes towards political leaders⁴.

Based on recent theoretical and experimental knowledge on the perception of candidates, the question arises to what extent these features, central in the perception of political actors, namely morality and competence, are potential determinants of the voting behaviour and to what extent are they prevailing during times of economic crisis or prosperity and stability versus socio-political system reform. Social actors resort to a complex cognitive processing when weighing the two dimensions of the person perception. Individuals are more sensitive to negative information about the honesty of leaders, so the information perceived regarding the negative-moral dimension of leaders is crucial in forming the impression, as compared with the positive one. Conversely, the positive information about competence is central to the perception of the person as compared to the negative one⁵.

Methodology

Hypotheses
Given the research mentioned above, we conducted an experiment meant to determine to what extent social actors are more sensitive to the information on the politicians’ moral behaviour as compared to the information on their skills. More specifically, we tested the following hypothesis: We assume that individuals are more sensitive to information about the moral behaviour of politicians than to their skills. In other words, the information on the moral behaviour is central in the perception of politicians’ honesty, therefore we expect that the absence or presence thereof highly influence the perception.

Stage I

Methodology
This study involved 44 students (M = 22, F = 22), in the first year at the Faculty of Political Sciences, specializing in Communication and Public Relations, aged between 19 and 22 years. The research was conducted in the second semester of undergraduate studies, namely April 2011.

Tools
The perception of the moral behaviour of politicians. In order to measure the way in which the subjects form an impression based on the type of information they are exposed to, we used a questionnaire presenting a judgment type scenario. Students read conflicting information about the activity of certain deputy. The scenario involved manipulating the competence variable, but keeping the morality variable constant:

Mihai Georgescu is a young deputy with multiple legislative initiatives. He gathered a group of young people and sometimes on Saturday he personally cooked for the poor eating hall, often seen by passers-by in the neighbourhood. Out of compassion for the elderly, and because he could act as such as a deputy, he thought to build a nursing home where the elderly and single have free access. The construction company in which the major shareholder is his friend Mihai proposes to erect the nursing home quickly and Deputy George Mihai interferes with the tendering process, favouring his friend. A criminal investigation was initiated for Deputy George Mihai and he now risks four years of prison for committing several offences.

To determine the extent to which morality is the central feature in the perception of the deputy, subjects had to evaluate the deputy on a Likert Scale, where 5 means „extremely guilty” and 1 „not guilty”.

Procedure
First, students were asked to carefully read the scenario-paragraph, task that was achieved by the collective management of the questionnaire during seminar hours. This task was presented as related to the goals of the semester and relevant for the evaluation. After reading the scenarios, subjects were tasked to assess whether they would vote with hypothetical-deputy described in those paragraphs. Socio-demographic data of study participants were also collected (participants’ sex, age, whether they have a job or not).

Results
As seen in Table 1, more than half of the subjects (N = 30, 69%) assessed the deputy as not guilty, and about a fifth found him guilty (N = 7, 16.3%).

Table 1. The distribution of answers regarding the guilt and innocence of person-target.

Phase II

In the second stage of the study, we wanted to check to what extent social judgment of others generates different emotional and behavioural responses depending on the emotions experienced by the target. Specifically, we addressed the following research questions: Are judgments of individuals affected by the emotions they feel? It is more likely that an individual under the impact of guilt make „softer” assignments on the other individuals’ guilt? What influence shame feelings have on the judgments and evaluations of objects, persons and social situations?

Hypotheses
The subjects with guilty feelings probably have the tendency to perceive as more honest the politicians who break the law. So the similarity perceived with the facts of the target implies a more „gentle” assessment on the guilt. Hence the hypotheses tested:

1. The more the subjects characterize themselves as more ashamed regarding an act, the more they have the tendency of perceiving as neutral the politicians who break the law.
2. The subjects who feel guilt will probably have the tendency to perceive as more honest the politicians who break the law.

Methodology

Experimental design. For testing the hypotheses, two experimental groups and one control group have been created, consisting of students enrolled in the Psychology of communication class, aged between 19 and 22 years. In the experimental groups, the independent variable was handled, namely the guilt emotion (N = 14) versus the shame emotion (N = 13). Other 16 students formed the control group, where no specific type of emotion was induced.

Procedure. Before assessing the moral behaviour of a deputy with fictitious name, the subjects in the two experimental groups were asked to make self-assignments on shame and guilt:

To measure the perception of the moral behaviour of politicians, a judgment type scenario was used, similar to the one used in the first stage of the study.

The voting intention of the subjects was measured by means of closed questions with Likert scaled answers, where 5 means not at all and 1 means entirely.

Results

The people in the „inducing guilt” experimental condition (N = 14) were more likely to appreciate that Deputy Georgescu is innocent, compared with the subjects in the control group (N = 16) and the group where shame was induced (N = 13) (Figure 1). In addition, those in the experimental group to which guilt was induced (N = 14) had a greater tendency to evaluate the behaviour of the deputy more favourably, appreciating on the innocence of the same (N = 10) (Table 2).

Table 2. Distribution of answers depending on inducing guilt versus inducing shame

In order to ascertain to what extent the variables of the guilt versus shame influence the perception of moral behaviour of a potential candidate, we performed the square chi test. The results showed that the emotion of guilt (χ = 18, 848, df = 8; p = 0.016> 0.05) and shame (χ = 5, 958, df = 6, p = 0.42> 0.05) did not interfere significantly in assessing the moral behaviour of others compared with the emotion of shame. At the same time, we also wanted to check how forming an impression on the social actor has a significant importance in the voting behaviour. As seen in Table 3, there is no significant difference between groups, so the judgments of individuals did not been governed by the emotions they feel. We can explain these results based on the investigated groups, less diverse in socio-demographic terms and the low number of study participants; it depicts the main limitations of this experiment.

Table 3. Voting behavior depending on inducing guilt versus inducing shame.

Conclusions

The research data indicate that individuals are more sensitive to negative information concerning the morality of politicians than their skills. In the social perceptions, the social skills weigh more than competences. Secondly, we have shown that social emotions of shame and guilt can activate a certain type of social judgment: under the impact of guilt, we tend to be more lenient in judging the moral behaviour of others. On the other hand, shame does not cause any variations in the evaluative judgments.

The results have practical applications in the field of political communication. A candidate’s image built on social traits (honesty, friendship, trust) is central in forming the impression about a politician than the image based on competences. The emphasis on the social characteristics was the preferred tactic of candidates in the recent presidential elections in the United States. The campaign staff of Barack Obama⁶ used cinéma-vérité type electoral clips, where candidates are portrayed interacting with people in real life situations, while Mitt Romney⁷ preferred testimonials in the management of impression.

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ALINA DUDUCIUC – Lector universitar doctor, Facultatea de Ştiinţe Politice, Universitatea Creştină „Dimitrie Cantemir”.

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