Will sharing a hobby or favorite movie make you like a politician more? The chances are pretty good, and it could even lead to a decrease in partisanship and division between political parties, found MSU political science professor Jennifer Wolak.
“Politicians who share non-political details about themselves get warmer evaluations from the public,” Wolak found in his latest post.As in the political content Us Weekly It can reduce polarized affect toward elected officials,” in the journal PS: Political Science and Politics.
Wolak’s research began by reading a column in Us Weekly titled “Ted Cruz: 25 Things You Don’t Know About Me (I can quote every line from ‘The Princess Bride!)'” The US senator and former presidential candidate shared details of the trivia: “The my first video game was Pong,” to the shocking, “My father was imprisoned as a teenager in Cuba before fleeing to the United States on a student visa.”
The Texas Republican also shared that he hates avocados, wears cowboy boots every day, and is level 350 on Candy Crush.
“It made me think about how much non-political details could help humanize politicians. So I designed an experiment to see if that was true,” Wolak said.
What he found is that when politicians share personal information about themselves, they gain support from voters, especially among those in the opposing party.
“This is important for those interested in reducing party divisions in the electorate. Things like candidate-focused campaigns, personal social media posts, and candidate talk-show appearances have the potential to help depolarize partisan thinking about politicians,” Wolak wrote.
The idea is that politicians invest a lot of money and time in managing their image with the idea of making themselves “likable” and seen as people, not just politicians.
“Reading this kind of personalized information may also contribute to ratings of elected officials that are less polarized by partisanship,” he wrote. “While personalization of information increases favorability toward politicians across party lines, members of the opposing party are especially likely to report warmer affection toward the politician they read. This suggests that this type of news coverage soft news has the potential to depolarize partisan evaluations of politicians.”
Similarly, politicians share photos of themselves with their family and share their upbringing in the hope of being seen as a “good” person.
Wolak conducted an experiment by giving participants a short list of personal, nonpartisan details about one of two well-known elected officials (Cruz or U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont), and then asking them about their impressions about the senator.
He found that personal details led to “warmer evaluations,” and participants perceived the senator as more likable, more trustworthy, and more willing to compromise than did those in the control group.
“When elected officials share details about their personal quirks and backgrounds, they change how people see them as individuals. It suggests that the apolitical personalization details people find in soft news are not interpreted through the same schema as traditional news,” he wrote. “Instead of seeing elected officials as just politicians, they see them as people too.”
The biggest boost in ratings came from those who don’t share the same partisan leanings as the politician, he found.
The difference between this type of column and campaign ads or mainstream news is that it is seen more as entertainment than political news. Because lists like US Weekly’s focus on personal attributes and don’t include political stances, readers focus on them as individuals rather than through a political stereotype, Wolak found.
“Soft news can present information in a way that does not necessarily activate partisan reasoning. In the case of personalizing details, the content is not particularly political. Politicians do not describe their partisan views or political priorities; instead, they are sharing their hobbies, interests and personal anecdotes,” he wrote.
The upshot is that candidates can not only boost their own image, but also temper the negativity of opposing parties and increase their ability to build a coalition.
“For those interested in undermining the power of partisanship in politics, a return to a candidate-centric style of campaigning could be one way to do that.”
Wolak is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on political behavior in the American context, with particular attention to political psychology, public opinion, gender, and state politics. She is the author of Compromise in an Age of Party Polarization, published by Oxford University Press in 2020. She has also published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and the British Journal of Political Science, among others. He earned his PhD in 2004 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He worked at the University of Colorado at Boulder before joining the department in 2021.
This article was originally published on Website of the Department of Political Science.
