Sex Role Perceptions and Televised Political Advertising:

Abstract

With a growing number of women seeking public office, it seems particularly important to compare public perceptions of male and female candidate performances of political television commercials, a dominant form of candidate-voter communication in modern elections. This experimental study tested reactions to both male and female candidates in each of six advertising settings. Two of these were settings traditionally associated with females, two were neutral settings. Results indicated that female candidates can be just as successful in television advertisements as male candidates, and that females are particularly successful when performing in male settings.