An eye tracking study of gender biased information acquisition in candidate evaluation

Abstract Gender stereotypes may impact voters' candidate choices. But do gender stereotypes impact voters' attention when learning about candidates? This paper explores whether citizens take part in gender biased information acquisition when learning about women and men candidates. In an experiment, I use eye tracking to measure respondents' attention to gender stereotype‐consistent and inconsistent information. The results indicate that citizens do not differ in their attention to different candidate information according to candidate gender. Additionally, respondents' own sex does not make a difference in their attention to masculine‐ and feminine‐stereotyped information for women or men candidates. These findings provide an important specification of the mechanism behind gender bias in candidate choices: the bias appears to be different standards of judgment for candidates of different genders, not different compositions of information being judged for candidates of different genders.