Partisan Standards of Ethics
We say that politicians are slimy, our noses wrinkling with disdain – but is that the way we like them? It seems the answer depends on whether we agree with their agenda.
With the 2012 election steadily approaching, I wondered whether Democratic and Republican voters hold their preferred candidate and the opposing candidate to similar ethical standards.
To find out, Heather Mann (a graduate student working with me) and I conducted a little survey on American voters. Half the participants were shown a picture of Barack Obama, accompanied by the following paragraph:
“Sometimes, politicians engage in activities that are ethically ‘gray’ (e.g. providing favors to campaign donors, not fully disclosing information to the public, scheduling votes when politicians are away, etc.).
In your mind, how acceptable is it for Obama to engage in ethically gray activities in order to get elected and carry out his agenda?”
The other half of participants was shown a picture of Mitt Romney, and asked the same question about Romney’s ethical standards. All participants rated how acceptable it would be for the candidate to engage in ethically “gray” activities on a scale ranging from 0 (completely unacceptable) to 100 (completely acceptable).
Afterward, we asked participants whether they planned to vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate in the 2012 election. (Participants who indicated that they were voting for someone else or weren’t sure were excluded from our sample.)
What we found was that participants who were planning to vote Democratic indicated that Romney should be held to a fairly high ethical standard. Republican participants held a similar standard for Obama. But when participants happened to support the candidate in question – whether Obama or Romney – they indicated that ethically gray activities were approximately 3 times more acceptable.
This study harkens the age-old philosophical question: does the end justify the means? Judging by the results, it appears that Americans on both sides of the political spectrum feel that it does, at least to a degree. Democrats and Republicans alike are willing to allow for some shady tactics, provided those tactics advance their own ideals.
Politicians are in a bit of a bind. On the one hand, they are expected to uphold high ethical standards, while on the other hand, they are supposed to represent their voters. If voters hold a double standard for the ethical conduct of their own candidate and the opposing candidate, the overall standard of ethics is likely to fall to the lowest common denominator.
If politicians do get a bit “slimy,” are they the only ones to blame? Who are politicians accountable to, if not their voters? Finally, if the ethical bar is steadily lowered in the service of advancing party agendas, then who is responsible for raising it?
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves
It reminds me a story of high and low construal level
Ingroup is low level construal. Means & heterogeneity across situations are low level construal too. Thus, your findings that ingroup candidate sometimes may do improper things that justify ends comes in line with the construal level theory.
Leah B.
Hypocrisy is the national pastime here in America. It’s deeply embedded in 20th century American history. A country built on rebellion that has since granted itself the authority to police it elsewhere in the world.
Of course no one enjoys being called out as a hypocrite or viewing him/herself in a less favorable light. No, it seems a great many people prefer the delusions that they are somehow more tolerant, more honest, more ethical and possess higher moral standards than “others”. Here in America we excel at it. So much so that we have the audacity to want to spread our own special brand of hypocrisy around the globe.
While I have no doubt that the conclusion is true, I don’t really think this experiment provides good evidence for it.
First, while the experiment’s question is phrased as a hypothetical, opinions about Obama and Romney are strong enough that I imagine most people would read the question less abstractly: what do you think of the actual ethical compromises that Obama/Romney have made so far in order to get elected? And while I’m sure partisans of both sides support their candidates here, that’s not quite what you’re trying to show; it could very well be that one candidate has actually made much more serious ethical compromises than the other.
In fact, it could be that the perceived ethical compromises of one candidate are actually the *cause* of people supporting the other candidate. I’m not actually sure this is true, but it’s somewhat plausible and not ruled out by your experiment.
Note, the adjective for people who belong to the President’s political party is ‘Democratic’, not ‘Democrat,’ unless you’re John Boehner or Karl Rove. I know blogs are supposed to be informal, but the Boehner/Rove usage borders on being a slur.
So I take it you’re a registered Democratic? Or just s silly old bitty with a poor command of the English language?
And I take it you know what an adjective is.
Gregor:
No, Judy had it right, and your usage was wrong. The adjective for people who belong to the party is “Democratic.” The noun is “Democrat.”
(That’s why it’s good strategy not to be insulting. Because we’re all wrong from time to time – and, when you sneer that someone has “poor command of the English language” and *you’re* actually the one who has it sideways, you look really bad and egotistical, unnecessarily.)
Your comment “If voters hold a double standard for the ethical conduct of their own candidate and the opposing candidate, the overall standard of ethics is likely to fall to the lowest common denominator.” left me thinking about our study of adverse selection and moral hazard in the context of lemons. When people believe ethical standards exercised by the other party (sellers, which in this case will be the opposing party Republican [for Democrats], and Democrats [for Republicans]), the overall quality of the political process and governance will suffer. Just thought I’d share!
insert “are low” just before “the overall quality…will suffer.”
What struck me most in looking at the chart was that people who self-identify as Democrats look to be about 30-40% more likely to cut Willard Mitt Romney slack given the same grey-zone scenario.
I was struck by the same thing. Each partisan group seems equally inclined to forgive the transgressions of their candidate (about 40%), but they don’t match in their forgiveness of the other party’s candidate (about 12% of Democrats forgive Romney and about 7% of Republicans forgive Obama). I wonder if that’s a function of actual differences between the parties or is merely a case of people holding the current President to a higher standard than merely a candidate for President. If this study had been done in 2004, would Democrats have been tougher on Bush than Republicans would have been on Kerry? Or would Democrats have been more forgiving of Bush then too?
I teach a program called “The Divine Decalogue for Dynamic Decency,” which delivers the 10 Commandments in positive paraphrases that highlight the desired behaviors they are designed to produce. For instance Command number 6 is “Mercy Mitigates Murder” and Command 8 is “Do not rip off others and yourself out of God’s plan for both your material blessings.”
The 10 Commands explain the objective standards of behavior everyone should adhere to and hold their politicians accountable to uphold and obey as they conduct “we the people’s” business.
Read more here: http://bit.ly/DivDecDynDec
The Japanese people
Why do you throw away the data from independents? Their the only ones who aren’t brainwashed. It’d be interesting to see what a healthy-minded person would have to say about ethics instead of the pinheads who scream at each other across the aisle.
I mean they’re…
Doesn’t this apply to anyone in a leadership role that we support, whether it be a religious leader, CEO, Coach, or one in a management position? I wonder if you tried to measure participants personal views on certain issues first (for example on cheating or lying or hiding affiliations or activities in questionable areas) then compared those responses to their support of certain leaders that have been involved in those areas to see how their standards vary depending on the individual. We would all like to believe we are objective, but is that really possible?
From the graph, it appears that those voting Democrat are about twice as tolerant of ethically questionable behavior by Romney as those voting Republican are of similar behavior by Obama. That seems significant.
I believe you may be adding more evidence to the conclusion. You’re perception is focused on the difference between the Democrats giving Romney some slack and the Republicans giving some slack to Obama where the numbers are both small, so of course a small actual number may be presented as a large percentage difference. Its the same thing seen all the time where one side claims that that the other guys are worse. In the larger scale both sides are doing the same thing. Look at the Citizens United and Roe v. Wade decisions. Each side wishes one the be enshrined in a monument and the other to be nullified. So where’s the Rationality there?
So if I understand you correctly, the 2:1 ratio of Democrat slack to Republican slack is not statistically significant, but the 3:1 ratio of partisan tolerance to bi-partisan tolerance is. Is that right?
I think the scale is itself significant. As the numbers who are willing to tolerate ethically gray behavior on the other side are far smaller than the number willing to accept it on their side then you get to a point where if 1% of Republicans supported ethically missteps from Democrats and 5% of Democrats supported Republican transgressions then one COULD say that Democrats are 400% more likely to be tolerant, but I still hold that the larger picture is where the focus should be and if neither party is willing to hold themselves to the what is significantly the same standard as they would hold the other then you have a recipe for continuation of the current climate of hostility. Unless pfdavis is a Republican pointing out the foibles of his own party, then its still a statement reading “but the other side is worse”. Democracies are messy, but the only way for one party to keep the behavior of the other party in check is to win elections and prevent them from having the opportunity for ethical issues. The most significant thing to see here is that one is unlikely to prevent unethical activities by voting. You merely get to influence who gets to commit the unethical activities. Either party can get you a Larry Craig or Anthony Weiner, but neither is likely to say that ethical behavior must accompany the preferred Ideology.
pfdavis, you are correct that the difference between Democrats and Republicans’ tolerance of the other side’s candidate was not statistically significant, while the difference between the preferred and non-preferred candidate was significant.
The Republican Party is a fascist anti-science Christian movement.
Pretending that there’s some ANY sort of equivalency is like pretending that everyone who opposes the Klan is either black or catholic.
I vote Democrat because I’m not insane, nasty or profoundly stupid. This does not make a Democrat. The results you have shown are also compatible with showing that one side is crazy and that one side isn’t. It’s like you’re showing that cutting a trusted person some slack is equivalent to cutting a repeat felon some slack.
Your analysis only holds if there isn’t a real, concrete, factual difference.
But there IS a real difference.
Creation Museum, need I say more?
This type of experiment design is not scientifically tenable in my view… It is the classic view from nowhere (and therefore, about nothing). It also assumes at the outset (though this is not explicitly stated it is inescapable), that both sides are equally likely to engage in the same kinds of ethical lapses. In a study about politics, this is a particularly terrible assumption.
I think you’ll find differences when it comes to specific ethical lapses.
It is far worse in India. Here a politician can win elections even if there is adequate evidence to believe that s/he possesses assets disproportionate to his/her known sources of income.
This could just be a trust issue. A “gray area” is, by definition, partially but not wholly acceptable, right? If there were not a plausible defense for an action, it would not be a gray area.
So how much slack you are willing to cut some one who is in a gray area has a lot to do with how much you trust him. Did your spouse come home really late on a Friday night? If you trust them, that usually isn’t a problem. You believe that they worked late and got a flat tire. If you don’t trust them, the lateness of their return is evidence of their faithlessness.
It could be a similar thing here. I’d be more interested in hearing how much slack party proponents would be willing to cut each candidate for proven ethical violations rather than unproven ones. Perjury or tax fraud would be pretty good test cases.