2025/04/03 by Jenkins, Diana
#Clinical Psychology #Developmental Psychology #FOS: Psychology #Psychology #Social Psychology #Social and Behavioral Sciences
paper · doi:10.17605/osf.io/z6upj
The 2024 election has historical significance. The current election not only consists of two candidates with polarizing viewpoints, but also poses the potential for our first female president. With society becoming more partisan, it is important to understand how patriarchal gender role attitudes and schemas relate to feelings about the election. Prior work suggests that traditional masculinity ideology and sexist attitudes are related to more conservative political ideologies (McDermott et al., 2021), and thus individuals with stronger attitudes may feel uneasy about the potential of a female president. Similarly, individuals who are excited about the potential of a female president may also feel stress around the election. Research conducted during the 2016 election, found that hostile sexism and traditional attitudes toward women, regardless of sex and political party, predicted voting for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton (Bock et al., 2017). Thus, certain traditional gender role attitudes might be a contributing factor with not only who participants select as president, but also their attitudes toward the 2024 election. Younger people tend to vote less than to older generations (U.S. Census Bureau), but with the significance of the 2024 election and exposure to social media, they may feel more compelled to vote. Thus, the goal of the current study is to examine attitudes around gender roles (e.g., masculinity ideology and stress, gender role conflict, sexism) and election stress and mental health (e.g., depression, anxiety) among college students. Further, religiosity and political ideology along with demographic variables will be examined as potential moderators.