Empathy and Electoral Accountability
| dc.contributor.advisor | Hanmer, Michael | en_US |
| dc.contributor.author | McDonald, Jared | en_US |
| dc.contributor.department | Government and Politics | en_US |
| dc.contributor.publisher | Digital Repository at the University of Maryland | en_US |
| dc.contributor.publisher | University of Maryland (College Park, Md.) | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2019-09-27T05:37:14Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2019-09-27T05:37:14Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2019 | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | In this dissertation, I examine the important role empathy has on voting behavior and election outcomes. First, I provide a rationale for why Americans find empathy a desirable trait in a leader. I argue that voters desire an empathetic leader, not because empathy is an inherently desirable trait as the literature so often assumes, but because this form of caring indicates that a politician is uniquely motivated and qualified to help others. And whereas prior scholarship emphasizes partisanship and global evaluations of politicians on support, I show how perceptions of empathy can serve as a heuristic for voters. This heuristic is especially important when voters do not have a partisan affiliation to influence their vote, such as in the case of pure independent voters and partisan voters in primaries. Second, I present a theory to explain why some politicians are perceived as more empathetic than others. Perceptions of empathy, I argue, are shaped largely by the presence of commonalities that link voters with a politician. In discussing the importance of commonalities, I differentiate between sympathy and empathy. I argue that empathy in a politician, or their ability to walk in another’s shoes, is more powerful than sympathy as a motivator of support. When a politician simply claims to “care” for the average American, voters may be skeptical. By demonstrating a common link with the voter, the politician overcomes what I call the “sincerity barrier,” or the tendency of individuals to approach the promises of politicians with skepticism. The key theoretical contribution in this dissertation is a classification scheme for the types of commonalities perceived by voters that lead to stronger perceptions of empathy: 1) a shared experience; 2) a shared emotion; or 3) a shared identity. To support this theory, I rely on a mixed-method approach, using in-depth interviews with political professionals, nationally representative surveys, and behavioral experiments. | en_US |
| dc.identifier | https://doi.org/10.13016/hvly-o12f | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1903/25015 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.subject.pqcontrolled | Political science | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | Candidate Traits | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | Empathy | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | Public Opinion | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | Survey Experiments | en_US |
| dc.title | Empathy and Electoral Accountability | en_US |
| dc.type | Dissertation | en_US |
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