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Do Votes Speak Louder than Motives? Moral Judgments and Tolerance in the 2016 Presidential Election
Author(s) -
Huff Sarah T.,
Hall Michael P.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
analyses of social issues and public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.479
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1530-2415
pISSN - 1529-7489
DOI - 10.1111/asap.12153
Subject(s) - outgroup , ingroups and outgroups , social psychology , interpersonal communication , psychology , voting , context (archaeology) , presidential election , politics , political science , law , paleontology , biology
When judging a voter's decision, does that voter's reason for casting their vote influence moral and interpersonal judgments about them? In the context of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, past research suggests two competing predictions. First, people regularly account for an actor's intentions when forming judgments of the actor, indicating that judgments may vary according to a voter's motives. However, people are unlikely to see nuance among outgroups, especially amid divisive political partisanship, suggesting that judgments would ignore information about voters’ motives. In Study 1, results supported the first prediction, showing that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump supporters distinguished between different voting motives when making moral and interpersonal judgments of outgroup voters. In Studies 2 and 3, when some voters’ motives became more extreme, Clinton and Trump supporters again distinguished between voting motives for outgroup and ingroup voters, respectively, albeit in a different pattern of results.