Leader Effects in an Era of Negative Politics: Who Has a Negativity Bias?

Loes Aaldering, Frederico Ferreira da Silva, Diego Garzia, Katjana Gattermann and Alessandro Nai
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Loes Aaldering: Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Frederico Ferreira da Silva: Institute of Political Studies, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Diego Garzia: Institute of Political Studies, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Katjana Gattermann: Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Alessandro Nai: Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Politics and Governance, 2025, vol. 13

Abstract:

It is well known that voters’ evaluation of candidates on leadership traits influences their overall candidate assessment and vote choice (i.e., leader effects). It remains unclear, however, whether positive or negative leader trait evaluations are most influential. We argue that especially in current-day political reality—in which ideological and affective polarization are skyrocketing and the political climate is fueled with negativity, high levels of incivility, and negative campaigning—the negative leader effects outweigh the positive ones. Moreover, we expect this negativity bias in leader effects to be conditioned by partisanship and political dissatisfaction. To test these expectations, we triangulate multiple studies. First, we use data from a multi-country election survey to examine the relation between perceived leadership traits of real candidates and party preferences, providing observational evidence from the US, the Netherlands, France, and Germany. Second, focusing on the causal mechanism, we test the negativity bias in a survey experiment among American voters. Here, we manipulate how leadership traits (competence, leadership, integrity, empathy) of a fictitious candidate are presented in terms of valence (positive, negative), and test the impact of these cues on voters’ candidate evaluations and vote choices. The findings indicate, as predicted, that negative leader effects influence voters most strongly. Thus, the role of party leaders is mainly a push instead of a pull factor in elections. Additionally, we show that partisanship and political dissatisfaction seem relevant only for candidate evaluations, not for vote choice. This article pushes the field of candidate evaluations forward by examining the dynamics of the negativity bias in leader effects in an era of negative politics.

Keywords: candidate evaluation; leader effects; negativity bias; political polarization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v13:y:2025:a:9187

DOI: 10.17645/pag.9187

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