How Candidates' Age and Gender Predict Voter Preference in a Hypothetical Election.

Are preferences for political candidates influenced by how old they appear to be? Amazon Mechanical Turk workers and undergraduate students were shown photos of 93 state legislators as candidates in hypothetical elections. Other information about the candidates (e.g., party affiliation) was held constant, randomized, or not presented. For very young candidates (< 35 years old), participants favored women over men. However, participants' intention to vote for male candidates increased with age until candidates were about 45 years old and then slightly decreased. In contrast, participants' intention to vote for female candidates consistently decreased with candidates' age. Perceived attractiveness and warmth accounted for some of the gender differences in the effect of candidates' perceived age.

How to Set Focal Categories for Brief Implicit Association Test? "Good" Is Good, "Bad" Is Not So Good.

Three studies were conducted to examine the validity of the four versions of BIATs that are supposed to measure the same construct but differ in shared focal category. Study 1 investigated the criterion validity of four BIATs measuring attitudes toward flower versus insect. Study 2 examined the experimental sensitivity of four BIATs by considering attitudes toward induced ingroup versus outgroup. Study 3 examined the predictive power of the four BIATs by investigating attitudes toward the commercial beverages Coke versus Sprite. The findings suggested that for the two attributes "good" and "bad," "good" rather than "bad" proved to be good as a shared focal category; for two targets, so long as they clearly differed in goodness or valence, the "good" rather than "bad" target emerged as good for a shared focal category. Beyond this case, either target worked well. These findings may facilitate the understanding of the BIAT and its future applications.