Abstract

Previous research has shown that populism is associated with increased negativity and reliance on simple heuristic criteria, such as gender stereotypes, in processing political information. Research on political communication, however, still has to investigate whether negative messages (e.g., political attacks) have different effects depending on the audience’s populist attitudes. In a simulated scenario, we presented participants with a description of a fictional male (versus female) candidate, and later exposed them to a political attack against the candidate. We then examined whether the effect of the attack varied depending on participants’ populism, the gender of the candidate attacked, and the attack’s focus on morality or competence, controlling for participants’ sexism and political orientation. The results showed that participants with high (versus low) levels of populism gave, in general, more negative evaluations of the candidate after the attack. Furthermore, participants with high levels of populism rated the female candidate lower after an attack on morality than after an attack on competence, while the opposite was true for the male candidate. The discussion focuses on how populists refer to the violation of stereotypical norms when evaluating negative information about political candidates.