Voter Stereotypes

The present study explores the relation between voter demographics and personal values to the values held by political candidates who may not promote the same values as a voter's in-group. More specifically, we're looking at Christians' internal responses to voting for a candidate that does not hold Christian values. We hypothesize that Christians will change which values are important for a candidate to have when the candidate does not hold the same values as Christians, but does hold the same political party as the participant. We expect there not to be a value change when a candidate does not hold the same values as Christians and does not hold the same political party as the participant. After running a MANOVA, we found that our hypothesis was not supported. However, there was a significant difference between political parties on religious values, such that Republicans held higher religious values than Democrats. This research is beneficial because it helps us to understand voting behaviors.

Value Changes as Justification for Opinions of Political Candidates

According to

Festinger’s 1957 cognitive dissonance theory, when we are inconsistent with our thoughts, beliefs, values, etc., we typically provide internal or external justifications to make ourselves feel or appear consistent. When we acting in an inconsistent way to our values or holding inconsistent beliefs, knowledge, or values. Internal justifications involve some type of change in our beliefs, knowledge, or even values to make ourselves more consistent.
This also happens in politics.

Liberals have been found to value fairness and conservatives have been found to value loyalty and patriotism. When researchers presented participants with an article on pro-conservation intentions- a typical liberal stance, conservatives held the same conservation values and intentions as liberals when the article framed pro-conservation intentions as being a matter of loyalty and patriotism (Wolsko et al., 2016). If you view this study through the lens of cognitive dissonance theory, you can see that the conservative participant may have experienced dissonance when were given a paragraph that said pro-conservation intentions and loyalty/ patriotism are synonymous and they did not value conservation intentions, but valued loyalty and patriotism. In order to relieve this dissonance, they needed to value both loyalty/ patriotism and conservation

intentions.
Christian conservative and liberals have to rationalized their Christian beliefs with their political beliefs. One way Christians have been found to do this is that they project their values onto Jesus’ values. In other words, if you’re a liberal Christian, you believe Jesus was liberal and cared most about the same issues that you do and if you are conservative, you believe Jesus was a conservative and cared most about the same political issues as you (Ross et al., 2011). This study also found that if participants rated fellowship as being central to their faith, they would rate fellowship as being more central to Jesus’ teachings. If participants rated morality as being central to their faith, they would rate morality as being more central to Jesus’ teachings.
Besides changing values and projecting beliefs, a person could also deny reality to relieve dissonance. Both conservatives and liberals are likely to deny research that does not match their predetermined attitudes (Washburn & Skitka, 2017). In their study, conservatives denied science more when science supported a liberal stance and liberals denied science more when science supported a conservative stance.
Together, these studies show that we are quick to justify our inconsistent thoughts, feelings, and behaviors through value changes, projection, and denial. We believe these internal justifications also happen when a voter votes for a candidate who does not hold the same political or religious beliefs as the voter. We conducted a study to understand how individuals can vote for a candidate who does not hold the same values as themselves. Understanding how religious groups promote a candidate that does not hold that religious groups values will expand the research on voting behavior and group processes. We have two hypotheses and a research question. Hypothesis 1: Participants will change their political and religious values to match that of the candidate when the candidate holds the same political party as the participant. Hypothesis 2: Participants will change their political and religious values to match that of the candidate when the candidate has the same religion as the participant. Research Question 1: Do participants current religious and political affiliation influence their values?

Methods

Purpose
We suspect dissonance will be aroused when participants are placed in a condition where they are asked to either vote for a candidate that holds the same political party as the participant, but not the same values, or to vote for a candidate who does not hold the same political party as the participant, but holds the same values. To relieve this dissonance, we hypothesize that participants will change the importance of certain values to be aligned with the candidate of their political party.
Participants and Materials
Two-hundred and two college students were recruited from a Midwestern university for this study. Materials used for this study were a political attitudes survey, a values assessment, a description of four candidates, questions about the two candidates as a reading check, and a demographic survey (including religious status). Of the 202 participants, 79.6% are white, 4.9% are African American, 1.9% are Asian, 8.0% are Latino or Hispanic, and 5.6% are mixed. As for gender, 73.1% of the participants are female, 26.9% are male.
Procedures
Participants were sent an email describing the study to subscribers of the university survey email list. If the participant agreed to participate in the study, they clicked the link in the email. Participants were first presented with fake profiles of candidates who are running for president. There were four possible candidate profiles: a Republican with typical Christian values, a Democrat with typical Christian values, a Republican who does not hold typical Christian values, and a Democrat who does not hold typical Christian values. Questions about the candidates were asked as an attention check. After reading about the candidate running for the office of president, the participants filled out two values survey, indicating their values in regards to politics and Christianity. Participants were asked if they would vote for this candidate, then filled out a demographic survey. A MANOVA was conducted in order to test differences between groups.