13:10 - 14:50
P3
Room: Meeting Room 2.1
Panel Session 3
Ceren Cinar - Listen to my Voice and Hear my Policy: Persistence of the Voice-Pitch Bias Against Policy Differences in Laboratory Elections
Leandro De Magalhaes - The Incumbent-Challenger and the Incumbent-Runner-up Advantage: Regression Discontinuity Estimation and Bounds
Lukas Stötzer - Citizen Forecasting in a Mixed Electoral System
Listen to my Voice and Hear my Policy: Persistence of the Voice-Pitch Bias Against Policy Differences in Laboratory Elections
P3-01
Presented by: Ceren Cinar
Ceren Cinar 1, Ozgur Kibris 2
1 1. PhD Candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Government Department
2 2. Professor at Sabanci University, Department of Economics
A growing body of literature has reliably established that a political candidate benefits from having a lower voice pitch. But how important is the voice pitch in comparison to a candidate’s political position? Does having a lower voice really matter when compared against the standard dimensions on which voters are thought to evaluate candidates, and if so, how much? How does the trade-off between voice-pitch and policy-stance depend on the candidate’s gender, the socio-economic characteristics of the voter, and the policy-issues on which the candidates contend? The objective of our study is to answer these questions, using an experimental methodology. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study to approach these questions. We corroborate the earlier literature in the existence of a voice-pitch bias. Furthermore, we find that voice-pitch bias is higher for male than for female candidates. However, the voice-pitch bias voters display is several times more persistent against policy differences among candidates when evaluating female as opposed to male candidates. Overall, even though male candidates face a higher voice-pitch bias absent policy differences, it is easier for them to correct for it by differentiating themselves on the policy dimension. Parallel with the earlier literature, we find that a lower voice pitch creates a perception of higher competence and higher trustworthiness, both for male and female candidates.