Politics, Sexism, and Junk Science

A much-touted study showing bias against ambitious female politicians isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Amidst the recent brouhaha about the alleged sexism of discussing Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s perceived “unlikability” and relative unpopularity as a presidential candidate, Atlantic columnist Peter Beinart asserted that any conversation on this issue should take account of America’s entrenched misogyny — especially hostility toward female ambition. As evidence, he pointed to a 2010 study with seemingly striking results:

[T]wo Yale professors, Victoria Brescoll and Tyler Okimoto, showed identical fictional biographies of two state senators — one male and one female — to participants. … When they added quotations to the biographies that characterized each as “ambitious” and possessing “a strong will to power,” the male state senator grew more popular. But the female state senator not only lost support among both women and men, but also provoked “moral outrage.”

As Beinart notes, he has written about this study several times before, mostly in the context of arguing that hostility toward Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi is rooted in sexism: a female politician seen as ambitious or power-seeking elicits not only negativity but “contempt, anger, and disgust” (feelings that the…