Feeling Their Pain

Why Voters Want Leaders Who Care

Jared McDonald (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

200 Seiten

2024
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-769690-3 (ISBN)

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The 2020 Presidential Election in the United States marked, for many, a return to "compassionate politics." Joe Biden had run on a platform of empathy, emphasizing his personal history as a means of connecting with everyone from American workers who had lost jobs to military families who had lost loved ones. Although perceptions of candidate compassion are broadly understood to influence vote choice, less understood is the question of how candidates convince voters they truly "care about people like them." In Feeling their Pain: Why Voters want Leaders who Care, Jared McDonald provides a framework for understanding why voters view some politicians as more compassionate than others.

McDonald shows that perceptions of compassion in candidates for public office are based on the number and intensity of commonalities that bind citizens to political leaders. Commonalities can come in many forms, such as a shared experience ("I've been through what you've been through"), a shared emotion ("I feel the way you feel"), or a shared identity ("I am who you are"). Compassion is conceptualized through the lens of self-interest. Compassion may be universal, such as when candidates convey empathy to all individuals who are struggling. Or compassion may be exclusionary, such as when candidates express a preference for some groups over others. Thus, the way campaigns choose to wield compassion in their messaging strategies has important implications not only for election outcomes, but for American political polarization as well.

Jared McDonald is an assistant professor at the University of Mary Washington. Jared's research examines how Americans process political information, update their preferences, and hold politicians accountable in the modern polarized era. He is the co-author of Citizens of the World: Political Engagement and Policy Attitudes of Millennials across the Globe (Oxford University Press, 2023). His other work has been featured in The Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, and Electoral Studies, Gender & Politics, Politics, Groups, & Identities, and The Journal of Experimental Political Science, among others.

1. Introduction
2: Who Cares? Why Compassion Matters in the Era of Polarization
3: Empathy through Commonality
4: Compassion, Gender, and Parenthood
5: The Dark Side of Compassion
6: Compassion and its Value for Politics
References

Erscheinungsdatum	01.11.2023
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	160 x 226 mm
Gewicht	272 g
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Vergleichende Politikwissenschaften
ISBN-10	0-19-769690-2 / 0197696902
ISBN-13	978-0-19-769690-3 / 9780197696903
Zustand	Neuware