Replication Data for: Gendered Perceptions and the Costs of Political Toxicity: Experimental Evidence from Politicians and Citizens in Four Democracies

Politicians frequently face toxic behaviors. We argue that these behaviors impose a double burden on women, who may not only face higher exposure to toxicity, but experience attacks that they and others understand to be motivated by prejudice and designed to push them out of office. Using large-scale image-based conjoint experiments in the US, Denmark, Belgium, and Chile, we demonstrate that both politicians themselves and citizens regard messages targeting women politicians as more toxic than otherwise equivalent messages targeting men. This perception intensifies when messages mention gender or come from perpetrators who are men. A second experiment to investigate the mechanisms shows that hostile behaviors toward women are more frequently understood as driven by prejudice and attempts to remove women from politics. These findings highlight the importance of understanding how perceptions of perpetrators' motives affect the severity of political toxicity, and provide insights into the gendered effects of political hostility.

政界人士时常遭遇政治恶意攻击行为。我们提出，此类攻击对女性政界人士构成双重负担：她们不仅面临更高的恶意攻击暴露概率，还会遭受被自身及他人判定为出于偏见、旨在将其逐出政坛的针对性攻击。本研究依托在美国、丹麦、比利时及智利开展的大规模基于图像的联合实验（image-based conjoint experiments），证实政界人士与普通民众均认为，针对女性政界人士的攻击言论，相较于针对男性政界人士的同类等价言论，恶意程度更高。当攻击言论提及性别议题，或施害者为男性时，这种恶意感知会进一步强化。第二项旨在探究作用机制的实验显示，针对女性的敌意行为，更常被认定为源于偏见，且目的在于将女性排挤出政治领域。本研究结果凸显了厘清施害者动机感知如何影响政治恶意攻击严重程度的重要性，并为理解政治敌意的性别差异化效应提供了理论洞见。