The new HBO movie Game Change, which revisits the 2008 presidential campaign, includes a scene in which Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin watches Tina Fey impersonate her on Saturday Night Live. While that was surely a surreal experience for the Alaska governor, the bigger question is: Did Fey’s spot-on mimicry affect how the rest of us viewed her? Newly published research suggests it did — to the detriment of her party. It finds young adults who watched the NBC comedy series’ Palin parodies were more likely than non-viewers to hold negative views of ... Read More
Peeling Away the Media Reaction to ‘Objectifying Sarah Palin’
March 13, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Over the few months time we spent on our latest study on the objectification of women in the public eye, our lives as scientists played out normally:• Design the study — Which women should we use to be rated? Should we include this measure or that one?• Analyze the results — Yes, the results are significant and as hypothesized.• Publish the academic article — We got accepted!But then the media got hold of our findings and the subsequent reaction was always surprising — and often appalling. In his Psychology Today blog, Dr. Stanton Peele reviewed my ... Read More
Sex Appeal May Have Hurt Sarah Palin
March 4, 2009 • By • 28 Comments
In a Sept. 4, 2008 column, just after Sarah Palin accepted the Republican nomination for vice-president, Will Wilkinson wrote admiringly of her “sexual power,” adding: “I think she is a tremendously sexy woman. How this will affect the race, I have no idea, but it’s just got to.” New research suggests the Cato Institute research fellow was right. The Alaska governor’s attractiveness may indeed have affected the race — by making voters less likely to support the GOP ticket. In a paper just published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, psychologists Nathan ... Read More
Palin, Biden Both Winners
October 3, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
A CBS News survey of 473 uncommitted voters found that following the debate, 53 percent said they now have a better impression of Sen. Joseph Biden. Only 5 percent had a worse opinion, while 42 percent said the debate did not change their impression of the Delaware Democrat. Similarly, 55 percent said they now have a better impression of Gov. Sarah Palin. Fourteen percent said they had a lower opinion of the Alaska Republican, while 30 percent said their views were unchanged. The percentage of people who viewed Palin as knowledgeable on the issues increased from 43 percent before the debate to ... Read More
Alaska: Land of Contradictions
October 2, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
In many ways, the politics of Alaska are a study in contrasts. On one hand, the state receives more federal money per capita than any other state in the union ($506.34, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense), and 1 in 3 jobs there is connected to the federal government. But a strong anti-government libertarian tradition resonates — in 1990, the state even elected a member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party, Walter Joseph Hickel, to be its governor. On one hand, Alaska is a remarkably sparsely populated state, with just 0.22 percent of the U.S. population (670,000 people) ... Read More
We Like Our Politicians Devout — But Not Too Devout
September 15, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
When Larry Powell was growing up in a small town in southern Alabama, his family had a strict Sunday morning ritual. They would sit down in front of the television and watch Meet the Press. They would then get up and go to church. "I thought everybody did that," said Powell, an academic and former political consultant who has extensively studied the association between the pew and the polling place. An associate professor of communications studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, he coined the term "The Pharisee Effect," in which a political candidate's excessive reliance on ... Read More
