Narcissistic Women and Cash-Strapped Men: Who Can Be Encouraged to Consider Running for Political Office,and Who Should Do the Encouraging?

Abstract

This paper not only considers whether encouragement can be an effective tool for increasing political ambition, but it also asks whether the source of that encouragement matters. That is, are some sources of encouragement more credible and effective than others? In addition, it explores the profiles of those individuals who are most likely to be receptive to recruitment, accounting for factors such as age, gender, income, education, political interest, knowledge, and personality. To answer these questions, we conducted two studies. The first is a survey of eligible voters. We recruited 371 Canadians from a national panel, asking a variety of questions regarding their level of political ambition. Importantly, we uncover distinct profiles for men and women who are most likely to respond positively to encouragement. In the second study, we conducted an online experiment with 443 undergraduate university students. Here, we focus on the question of who is providing the encouragement as we manipulated the gender of the actor providing the encouragement to run for office. We find that women who are encouraged by a male party recruiter are significantly less likely to express interest in a political career than those in our gender-neutral control condition.

Keywords

political ambition recruitment political parties gender representation

Introduction

The continued underrepresentation of women in national legislatures around the world has resulted in renewed attention and scrutiny at the recruitment of potential legislative candidates, especially the recruitment efforts of political parties and party officials (Bjarnegard and Kenny 2015; Cross and Young 2013; Crowder-Meyer and Lauderdale 2014; Dittmar 2015; Kenny 2013; Norris and Lovenduski 1995; Verge 2015). As gatekeepers to elected legislatures, political parties play an important role in deciding who can contest the general election and, therefore, who has the possibility of being elected (Caul 1999; Cross et al. 2016; Krook 2010; Pruysers and Sayers 2018). Without more women in the candidate pool, more representative legislatures are unlikely to be produced. Recent evidence, however, highlights a number of challenges in this regard. The literature suggests that party officials recruit men “more frequently and more intensely than women” (Butler and Preece 2016, 842). This is especially troubling given that men are more likely to be self-starters or political entrepreneurs when it comes to candidacy whereas women tend to be recruited. In other words, men need less encouragement to enter politics but receive more (Cross and Young 2013; Lawless and Fox 2005, 2010). Even more problematic is recent evidence suggesting that women are less likely to respond positively to recruitment efforts than men (see Preece and Stoddard 2015; Preece, Stoddard, and Fisher 2016). We are, therefore, left with a situation in which women tend to need to be asked to run before they enter politics, are less likely to be asked to run, and, when they are asked, are less likely to respond positively. This is not very encouraging if we are concerned with increasing the gender parity of the ballot.

As Preece, Stoddard, and Fisher (2016, 562) note, however, the literature has tended to be too “focused on who gets asked, not how those who are asked respond.” We take this critique further: not only has the literature ignored how those who are asked respond, but it has also not fully considered who asks and how responses can vary as a result. Furthermore, in focusing on who gets asked, little attention has been devoted to who says yes, beyond traditional explanations such as sociodemographics. This paper addresses both of these limitations in the current political ambition and recruitment literature. First, the paper not only considers whether encouragement can be an effective tool for increasing political ambition, but it also asks whether the source of that encouragement matters. In other words, are some sources of encouragement more credible and effective than others? Second, it explores the profiles of those individuals who are most likely to be receptive to recruitment, accounting for factors such as age, gender, income, education, political interest and knowledge, and personality.

To answer these questions, we conducted two studies. The first is a survey of eligible voters in Canada. We recruited 371 Canadians from a national panel, asking a variety of questions regarding their level of political ambition. Importantly, we include a number of questions that ask respondents whether they would consider running for office if a party official, community leader, family member, or friend/colleague encouraged them to do so. Here, we also include a large battery of personality items, exploring important, though understudied, individual differences. In the second study, we conducted an online experiment with 443 undergraduate university students. Here, we focus on the question of “who asks” as we manipulated the gender of the actor providing the encouragement to run for office. The combination of the two studies allows us to explore whether encouragement might be an effective tool for increasing political ambition, and investigate differences between the various sources of encouragement.

The paper proceeds in four steps. We begin by reviewing the political ambition and recruitment literature that informs our various hypotheses. This is followed by a discussion of our data (sample, etc.) and measures. This is particularly important as we include a variety of explanatory variables, such as personality traits, which are still relatively new to the study of political behavior in general, and political ambition more specifically. We then turn our attention to an empirical analysis of political ambition, and the impact of encouragement and its source. While the survey data reveal that other actors can be just as effective as parties in fostering a sense of political ambition among men and women, the experimental results provide evidence to suggest that women respond poorly to recruitment by male party officials. The paper ends with a discussion of the results, limitations, and possibilities for future research.

Political Ambition and Recruitment: Theory and Hypotheses

We begin with a review of the literature regarding political ambition and recruitment as they relate to our two studies and inform our hypotheses regarding encouragement and gender affinity in candidate recruitment. Gender gaps in political behavior are well established and have been identified for vote choice (Inglehart and Norris 2003), political interest (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996), political efficacy (Burns, Schlozman, and Verba 2001), and voter turnout (Firebaugh and Chen 1995). Political ambition is no exception (Fox and Lawless 2005). Although the literature provides compelling and consistent evidence of this gap, it is worth empirically re-exploring gender differences in political ambition in this paper for at least two reasons. First, the majority of research demonstrating a gender gap in the desire to seek political office has been limited to the United States (i.e., Carroll 1985; Costantini 1990; Elder 2004; Fox and Lawless 2005; Lawless and Fox 2005, 2010, 2013). Second, research outside of the United States has often relied on University students, rather than utilizing a more representative sample of citizens (i.e., J. Blais and Pruysers 2017; Pruysers and Blais 2017). We address this limitation by examining political ambition among a more representative sample of Canadian voters. Consistent with the existing literature, we expect to find considerable differences between men and women with regard to their level of political ambition, with men exhibiting higher levels of ambition in general and more confidence in their qualifications and ability to win office should they decide to run.

Hypothesis 1 (H1): Men will exhibit higher levels of political ambition than women. This will extend beyond interest in a political career and will also apply to confidence in their political abilities and self-perceived qualifications.

Given the unrepresentative nature of national legislatures, political parties (and advocacy groups such as Vote Run Lead) have begun to engage in online and mail campaigns to encourage women to enter politics. The Canadian Liberal Party, for instance, established an “Invite Her to Run” campaign in the lead up to the 2015 general election, in which women could be nominated to receive a message of support from the party to consider running for office.¹ In a similar fashion, the Women’s Campaign Fund has issued more than two hundred thousand invitations to women in the United States, encouraging them to consider a career in politics (Dittmar 2015, 760). The success of such programs, however, has been questioned (Pruysers and Blais 2018). To address this issue, we asked respondents whether they would consider running for office if a party official,² community leader, family member, or friend encouraged them to do so.

As the gatekeepers to elected office (Caul 2001; Cross and Young 2013; Crowder-Meyer and Lauderdale 2014; Krook 2010; Norris and Lovenduski 1995; Pruysers and Cross 2016; Tremblay 2007), political parties play an essential crucial role in recruiting and nominating candidates. Parties, especially in Canada, are the major players as very few independent candidates are successfully elected (Cross 2004; Cross et al. 2016). As such winning a party nomination is the only effective path to parliament. Given their crucial role, we suspect that party officials will be viewed as more credible in this arena and, therefore, result in higher levels of openness to consider a political career. Thus, our second hypothesis is as follows:

Hypothesis 2 (H2): Willingness to run for office will be highest when encouragement comes from a party official.

Given the already substantial gender gap in political ambition that has been identified in the literature (Bledsoe and Herring 1990; Carroll 1985; Costantini 1990; Elder 2004; Fox, Lawless, and Feeley 2001; Lawless and Fox 2005; Pruysers and Blais 2017), we expect to find somewhat of a ceiling effect for men when it comes to encouragement. That is, given their comparatively high levels of ambition, we do not expect encouragement to substantially increase ambition among the men in our sample. This would be consistent with the findings of Preece (2016) who finds that positive feedback regarding their performance on a political knowledge test does not increase men’s political interest while it did significantly raise women’s political interest. Moreover, since women are less likely to be “self-starters” or “political entrepreneurs” when it comes to political candidacy (Cross and Young 2013) on one hand, and less likely to be recruited on the other (Lawless and Fox 2010), we expect them to respond more positively to potential recruitment. Carroll and Sanbonmatsu (2013, 61), for instance, suggest that political ambition is relationally embedded for women but more self-starting for men. As such, we expect the gender gap in political ambition to close when encouragement is provided. This, however, is conditioned by H2 and the credibility that political parties have in this regard. Our third hypothesis is as follows:

Hypothesis 3 (H3): Encouragement from a party official will close the gender gap in political ambition.

We end our empirical examination of political ambition in Study 1 with a multivariate analysis exploring the profile of men and women who respond positively to our hypothetical encouragement. That is, those who report that they would consider running for office if they received encouragement from a party official, community leader, family member, or friend. Importantly, we conduct separate analyses for each source of encouragement to see whether different kinds of participants responded differently to the sources of encouragement.

Here, we have no specific hypotheses and instead conduct a preliminary and exploratory analysis. We are, however, guided by the literature in this endeavour. The work of Lawless and Fox (2010), for instance, has consistently shown that sociodemographic variables are related to political ambition. We, therefore, include a variety of variables such as age, income, and education. Recent research has demonstrated that personality traits help explain differences in political behavior and attitudes towards politics. This includes differences in civic duty (A. Blais and Labbe St. Vincent 2011), political participation (Mondak 2010; Vecchione and Caprara 2009), vote choice (Barbaranelli et al. 2007; Schoen and Schumann 2007), and political ideology (Chirumbolo and Leone 2010; Schoen and Schumann 2007). More recently, J. Blais and Pruysers (2017) reveal that a number of personality traits are associated with higher levels of political ambition. As a result, we include two batteries of personality items in our analysis: the HEXACO (honesty-humility [H], emotionality [E], extraversion [X], agreeableness [A], conscientiousness [C], and openness to experience [O]) and Dark Triad. Finally, we include a number of control variables for ideology, party identification, political interest, knowledge, and engagement.³

As for Study 2, we consider a single hypothesis. Namely that the gender of the source of encouragement will matter. Recent research suggests that more women are nominated as legislative candidates when women are in positions of political authority within the party. For Cheng and Tavits (2011), this is a woman as the local executive president, whereas for Pruysers et al. (2017), it is the number of women on the party’s executive body. Both make a similar argument: women in positions of political authority signal to potential candidates that the party is open and inclusive on one hand and provide opportunities for active recruitment on the other. More specifically, the argument is that having women in positions of authority contributes to the breakdown of the out-group effect (Niven 1998) and challenges gender stereotypes (Bashevkin 2009), meaning that even when recruiters recruit people like themselves, women will be among those recruited. Thus, our final hypothesis is as follows:

Hypothesis 4 (H4): Women will be more receptive to encouragement to run for office when the source of encouragement is also a woman.

Data and Method

Study 1 Sample and Measures

Participants were recruited from an established online national survey panel maintained by Qualtrics. Respondents completed a thirty-minute survey, which included several personality questionnaires, demographic questions, and a series of questions regarding their political views and behavior (political participation, civic duty, political ambition, attitudes regarding public spending, etc.). The survey also included a number of attention check questions, and only those who answered correctly remained in the sample. The final sample was made up of 371 Canadians of voting age (M_age = 49.2, SD = 15.2) with a slight majority of participants being women (58%).⁴ Data were collected in March 2017.

Our primary dependent variable is a modified version of the standard political ambition question, which asks whether an individual would ever/has ever considered running for political office. Building on the recent work of Preece, Stoddard, and Fisher (2016), we asked respondents whether they would consider running for political office if the following individuals personally encouraged them to do so: political party official, community leader, family member, or friend/colleague.⁵ This approach allows us to consider not only whether encouragement in general can close the gender gap in political ambition but also whether the source of encouragement matters in this regard. Although only the focus of our first hypothesis, we also included traditional political ambition questions taken from the existing literature. This includes questions regarding perceived qualifications for political office, likelihood of winning an election, a rank order of hypothetical careers (including some political options), and whether the respondent had ever previously considered a career in politics (see Lawless and Fox 2013 for similar measures of political ambition).⁶ Thus, we are able to explore both interest in a political career and efficacy in political abilities.

To conduct our multivariate analysis regarding the profile of respondents who are the most likely to respond positively to encouragement, we include a variety of potential explanatory variables. In terms of demographics, we include gender, age, level of education, ideology (placement on the left-right scale), party identification, and annual income. We also included a number of controls regarding their political acumen.⁷ Participants indicated how interested they are in politics on a 10-point Likert scale, answered a five-question political knowledge test, and indicated whether they voted in the 2015 Canadian federal election. Given the relationship between personality and political behavior (Mondak 2010), we also included two batteries of personality questions. The HEXACO-Personality Inventory (Lee and Ashton 2004) is a 60-item self-report scale that assesses the six factors of the HEXACO model of personality: honesty-humility (H), emotionality (E), extraversion (X), agreeableness (A), conscientiousness (C), and openness to experience (O). In the present sample, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were all within the acceptable range (.70 to .83). The Dark Triad consists of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy and was measured using the Short Dark Triad (SD3; Jones and Paulhus 2014). The SD3 is a twenty-seven-item self-report measure assessing Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. The internal consistency of the subscales used in the current analyses was acceptable (Cronbach’s alpha: Machiavellianism = .80; narcissism = .76; psychopathy = .79).

Study 2 Sample and Procedure

The sample in Study 2 comprised 443 undergraduate students (332 women, 110 men, one participant identified as other) from a large Canadian university, enrolled in first- and second-year psychology courses.⁸ The mean age of the sample was 20.29 (SD = 4.92) and the majority of participants were Caucasian (72.2%). The data were collected online using the survey tool Qualtrics between September and October 2017.

Participants were randomly assigned into one of three experimental conditions. After completing a battery of personality items, participants were asked whether they would consider running for office if they were encouraged to do so. In our control condition, respondents were given the scenario in which a generic party official encouraged them to do so: Would you consider running for office if a prominent party official encouraged you to do so? In our treatment conditions, by contrast, we subtlety manipulated the gender of the party official who was responsible for providing the encouragement by specifying the name of the fictional party recruiter. The manipulation read as follows, with one condition receiving Jessica and the other Kevin: Would you consider running for office if Jessica [Kevin] Richmond, a prominent party official, encouraged you to do so? Although we do not specify the level of office participants are being recruited for, recent evidence suggests women run for office at equivalent rates municipally, provincially, and federally in Canada (see, for example, Tolley 2011). Participants then completed the remainder of the online survey, which included political interest questions, a short political knowledge test, and demographics about themselves.

Results: Study 1

We begin our analysis by looking at political ambition in general. Although the literature has shown a clear gender gap in political ambition (Carroll 1985; Costantini, 1990; Elder 2004; Fox and Lawless 2010; Lawless and Fox 2005; Preece, Stoddard, and Fisher 2016), the vast majority of this research focuses on the United States. An important question, therefore, is to what extent do we find a similar gender gap elsewhere? On the standard measures of political ambition, there is a significant gender gap among our Canadian respondents. Consistent with previous research in the area, for example, men are considerably more likely to report a desire for a political career compared with women. Whereas 47 percent of men placed a political career in their top five choices from a list of ten potential jobs, only 34 percent of women did so (a 13-percentage point difference; see Figure 1). Although not shown in Figure 1, just 3 percent of women choose a political career as their number one preferred job compared with 10 percent of men. Similarly, while one-in-three men report that they have thought about running for political office, fewer than one-in-five women have done so.

We find similar gender gaps with regard to a sense of efficacy in a political career as well: men are considerably more confident in their qualifications to run for office and their ability to win a political campaign should they contest an election. There is a considerable 29 percentage point difference between men and women who consider themselves qualified for a political career (56% of men compared with 27% of women) and a 16 percentage point gender gap in terms of those who report that they would likely win their election should they ever run for office. Interestingly, Pruysers and Blais (2017) reveal that efficacy in a political career is not dependent on tangible skills or qualifications. That is, similarly qualified women tend to view themselves less qualified than men do (see also Lawless and Fox 2005).⁹

It is worth noting that these gender gaps in ambition persist in multivariate analyses even when controlling for a variety of factors such as age, education, income, political interest, knowledge, and political engagement. We can, therefore, confirm our first hypothesis: a considerable gender gap in political ambition is not limited to the United States and can be found in a considerably different political environment (Canada).

What about encouragement? Does being confronted with support level the playing field and close the gender gap, and if so, what sources of encouragement are the most effective? Respondents were given the hypothetical situation in which four different individuals (party official, community leader, family member, and friend/colleague) encouraged them to run for office, and were then asked whether they would consider running for office given this encouragement. Figure 2 shows the results. Interestingly, we do not find that political parties hold a monopoly on encouragement for political office. Indeed, encouragement from a political party official does not increase the odds that a participant would consider running for office compared with encouragement from less “credible” sources such as family members or colleagues. Twenty-eight percent of men, for instance, report that they would consider running for office if a party official encouraged them to do so compared with 29 percent who said the same regarding encouragement from a family member. As a result, we find little support for our second hypothesis: roughly the same proportion of participants report a willingness to consider running for office regardless of the exact source of encouragement. This is consistent with a recent survey of candidates in the 2015 Canadian general election. Four-in-ten candidates reported that friends and family encouraged them to run for office and that this was important to their decision compared with 38 percent who identified encouragement from the local party branch.

Contrary to our third hypothesis, we find significant gender differences even when respondents are confronted with hypothetical encouragement from a variety of sources. Approximately 15 percentage points separate men and women on each of the four sources of possible encouragement to seek a political office. Whereas 28 percent of men report a willingness to run for office if a party official provided encouragement, only 14 percent of women responded positively. Despite the expectation that already high levels of political ambition among men would render encouragement more effective for women, a pronounced gender gap remains. Again, this gender gap persists in multivariate analyses with a variety of controls. Although we are unable to test this possibility, lower levels of ambition in the face of encouragement may be, at least partly, the result of a social desirability effect among women. That is, because ambition is perceived to be masculine and unfeminine, women may be less likely to be forthcoming about their ambition even in the face of encouragement (this would be consistent with the personality results discussed in the following section).

The results in Figures 1 and 2 include the entire sample. What if we limit the analysis to those who report that they have never thought about a political career? In other words, what happens if we explore the effect of encouragement among only those individuals with no real preexisting political ambition (i.e., those who report that they have “never” thought about running for office). The data reveal a number of interesting findings (see Figure 3). First, among these individuals, encouragement has a clear ability to increase political ambition. About 20 percent of respondents who have never previously considered a political career report that they would consider running for office if they were encouraged to do so. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the gender gap in ambition disappears among these respondents. Take, for example, encouragement from a community leader. Ten percent of men who have never considered a career in politics report that they would consider such a career if they were encouraged to do so by a community leader compared with 9 percent of women. The same pattern holds across each of the four sources of potential encouragement. Overall, these women are just as likely to report that they would consider running for office as men.

Having demonstrated a gender gap in political ambition and revealed that it does not close as a result of encouragement, we now turn our attention to a multivariate analysis that explores the profile of individuals who are most likely to respond positively to potential encouragement to run for political office (i.e., those who report that they would consider running for office if they received encouragement to do so). In doing so, we examine all individuals in our sample (those who have already thought about running for office and those who have never considered a political career). Given the significant gender differences presented earlier—both in political ambition generally and responses to encouragement more specifically—we conduct the analysis for men and women separately. Table 1 includes the results for women, whereas Table 2 shows the results for men. The most obvious finding is that the profiles for those who are the most responsive to encouragement are considerably different for men and women in our sample.

Table 1.

Binary Logistic Regression Results by Source of Encouragement (Women Only).

	Party encouragement		Community encouragement		Family encouragement		Friend encouragement
	Exp(B)	SE	Exp(B)	SE	Exp(B)	SE	Exp(B)	SE
Political interest	1.255	0.156	1.212	0.152	1.055	0.163	0.994	0.154
Knowledge	0.905	0.202	0.913	0.190	0.941	0.200	1.015	0.190
Voted	1.054	1.02	0.939	0.904	2.490	1.00	2.441	0.976
Age	0.968	0.022	0.973	0.021	0.988	0.023	0.990	0.022
Income	0.962	0.236	1.200	0.212	1.257	0.245	1.324	0.232
Education	1.103	0.216	0.923	0.190	0.867	0.196	0.885	0.188
Liberal	0.540	0.858	0.417	0.820	0.332	0.944	0.403	0.868
Conservative	0.169	1.12	0.298	0.986	0.581	1.10	0.456	1.04
Ideology	0.858	0.155	0.775*	0.148	0.845	0.147	0.833	0.142
Qualified	4.059***	0.570	5.603***	0.578	14.096***	0.737	7.895***	0.655
Machiavellianism	0.933	0.070	1.002	0.061	1.124*	0.067	1.078	0.064
Narcissism	1.106	0.068	1.178**	.070	1.179**	.075	1.141*	0.070
Psychopathy	0.928	0.075	0.926	0.073	0.878	0.079	0.914	0.074
Honesty-humility	0.873**	0.057	0.922	0.053	0.954	0.057	0.926	0.055
Emotionality	0.980	0.059	0.903*	0.055	0.850**	0.063	0.894*	0.057
Extraversion	1.025	0.066	0.948	0.062	0.874*	0.070	0.928	0.065
Agreeableness	1.010	0.064	0.997	0.058	0.952	0.064	0.961	0.059
Conscientiousness	1.019	0.063	1.001	0.061	0.935	0.065	0.938	0.063
Openness	1.019	0.062	1.072	0.058	1.056	0.063	1.055	0.061
Nagelkerke R	.431		.458		.469		.403

Reference category for party identification is the New Democratic Party (NDP); outcome variable is whether respondent would consider running if the following sources encouraged them to do so. Bolded values represent significant findings.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

Table 2.

Binary Logistic Regression Results by Source of Encouragement (Men Only).

	Party encouragement		Community encouragement		Family encouragement		Friend encouragement
	Exp(B)	SE	Exp(B)	SE	Exp(B)	SE	Exp(B)	SE
Political interest	1.354*	0.158	1.327*	0.162	1.055	0.134	1.106	0.142
Knowledge	1.120	0.197	1.115	0.206	1.096	0.189	1.042	0.196
Voted	0.822	0.901	1.067	0.992	2.754	1.028	2.014	1.044
Age	0.968*	0.020	0.948**	0.021	0.953**	0.020	0.939***	0.021
Income	0.637**	0.225	0.589**	0.234	0.759	0.208	0.621**	0.229
Education	0.998	0.141	1.020	0.148	0.966	0.140	1.240	0.158
Liberal	4.428*	0.890	3.972	0.873	2.617	0.764	1.513	0.773
Conservative	4.999*	0.973	4.070	0.959	0.651	0.840	0.290	0.919
Ideology	1.000	0.143	0.925	0.152	1.223	0.140	1.338*	0.150
Qualified	6.491***	0.633	8.661***	0.675	7.702***	0.586	9.452***	0.631
Machiavellianism	0.874**	0.061	0.902*	0.061	0.992	0.054	0.980	0.056
Narcissism	0.949	0.070	0.957	0.072	0.981	0.064	0.923	0.066
Psychopathy	1.012	0.063	1.102	0.070	1.013	0.061	1.050	0.065
Honesty-humility	0.813***	0.067	0.885*	0.066	0.974	0.057	0.960	0.060
Emotionality	1.007	0.054	1.040	0.054	1.006	0.049	1.058	0.053
Extraversion	1.039	0.060	1.111*	0.064	1.062	0.055	1.099	0.059
Agreeableness	1.058	0.048	1.079	0.050	1.021	0.045	1.015	0.047
Conscientiousness	0.967	0.053	0.987	0.055	0.958	0.051	0.967	0.054
Openness	1.072	0.048	1.087	0.054	1.038	0.045	1.040	0.048
Nagelkerke R	.412		.478		.358		.411

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

For both men and women, the degree of self-perceived qualifications for political office is a strong predictor of whether an individual would consider running for office if encouraged to do so. Women who view themselves as qualified, for instance, are fourteen times more likely than those who feel unqualified to consider running for office if encouraged to do so by their family. For men, these individuals are nearly eight times more likely. Importantly, self-perceived qualifications are a significant predictor across each of the potential sources of encouragement for both men and women. Unsurprisingly, however, there is a considerable gender gap in self-perceived qualifications for political office. Whereas 27 percent of the women in our sample view themselves as at least somewhat qualified for political office, this figure is more than double for men (56%). The similarities between men and women, however, end here. As Tables 1 and 2 demonstrate, for women, the most consistent predictors of a positive response to encouragement are personality variables. For men, however, it is the sociodemographic variables.

As Table 1 demonstrates, scores of low emotionality and high narcissism are consistently associated with responding positively to encouragement for the women in our sample. A narcissistic personality has been described as “self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing, displaying characteristics of condescending superiority, lack of empathy, and preoccupation with others’ admiration” (Akehurst and Thatcher 2010, 131; see also Morf and Rhodewalt 2001), while low emotionality/sensitivity describes those individuals who are “relatively tough, brave, and insensitive to physical pain,” experience “little stress in response to difficulties,” and are “self-assured and able to deal with problems without any help or advice” (Lee and Ashton 2004, 334). Interestingly, these personality traits are more “masculine” and are more likely to be found in men than women (Grijalva et al. 2015). Although honesty-humility only reaches significance in the party recruitment model, it is negatively correlated with ambition. The honesty-humility trait, which is more likely to be found in women, is characterized by sincerity, modesty, and greed-avoidance. In this sense, women who respond positively to encouragement to consider running for political office are more like men in terms of their personality than they are other women.

Table 2 reveals no similar personality profile for men. It does, however, reveal that younger men and those with lower incomes are more receptive to encouragement to run for political office. Surprisingly, political interest, knowledge, and engagement exert very little influence for men or women. Interestingly, for men, party identification seems to matter when the recruitment comes from a party official. Those who identify with the Liberals and Conservatives are more likely to respond positively to potential candidacy than those who identify with the New Democrats. This is likely a result of the competitive dynamics of the Canadian party system and the fact that the Liberals and Conservatives have been the country’s traditional governing parties, and routinely elect more members than the New Democratic Party (NDP).

Results: Study 2

As Figure 2 in Study 1 revealed, there are no significant differences across the various sources of encouragement. The same percentage of individuals report a willingness to consider running for office due to encouragement from a political party as do those receiving encouragement from family and friends. Although the precise relationship to the source of encouragement does not appear to matter, other factors about the individual providing encouragement may nonetheless exert influence on the response. Here, we consider whether the gender of who is providing the encouragement influences the response. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions where the gender of the individual offering encouragement was manipulated. In the control condition, no gender is provided as we simply refer to a prominent party official. In the treatment conditions, however, respondents were provided encouragement from a prominent party official either named Jessica or Kevin Richmond.¹⁰

Despite our hypothesis, we find no evidence of the kind of gender affinity effect that we expected. Women in the control and female recruiter conditions do not significantly differ in terms of their openness to considering a political career. Although we expected women to be more open to a political career in the female recruiter condition, as this would signal that the party is open and inclusive, there is no statistically significant difference between the two conditions (see Figure 4). We do, however, find that women respond significantly worse to a male recruiter (p = .01). Whereas one-in-three women in our control condition were open to a political career, less than 20 percent responded positively when the recruiter was explicitly identified as a man.

Table 3 confirms these results in a multivariate analysis controlling for age, income, ethnicity, and political interest. Women in the male recruiter condition are significantly less likely to report that they would be willing to consider running for office compared with the generic control condition. Beyond experimental condition, only political interest is significantly related to the outcome.

Table 3.

Political Ambition and Gender of Party Recruiter (Women Only).

	B	SE	Exp(B)
Age	−0.052	0.031	0.949
Ethnicity (Caucasian)	0.029	0.345	1.029
Income	0.031	0.115	1.032
Political interest	0.461	0.066	1.586***
Female recruiter condition	−0.586	0.349	0.556
Male recruiter condition	–1.034	0.365	0.356***
Nagelkerke R	.294

Women only; reference category for experimental condition is “control.” Bolded values represent significant findings.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

Table 4 reports the binary logistic results for men. As was the case for the women in our sample, there is a strong relationship between political interest and openness to a career in politics. Unlike women, however, we find no significant differences across the three conditions. Regardless of the gender of the recruiter, approximately half of the male participants reported that they would be willing to consider running for office if they were encouraged to do so. This is consistent with our expectations. As men already have higher levels of baseline ambition, and given that they are more likely to be political self-starters, the precise nature of encouragement to seek office does not seem to influence the general response.

Table 4.

Political Ambition and Gender of Party Recruiter (Men Only).

	B	SE	Exp(B)
Age	−0.090	0.052	0.914
Ethnicity (Caucasian)	0.246	0.505	1.279
Income	0.267	0.173	1.306
Political interest	0.498	0.100	1.646***
Female recruiter condition	−0.169	0.588	0.844
Male recruiter condition	−0.196	0.596	0.822
Nagelkerke R	.426

Men only; reference category for experimental condition is “control.” Bolded values represent significant findings.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

Conclusion

The results of our two studies reveal a number of interesting findings beyond simply documenting a gender gap in political ambition outside of the United States. First, we demonstrate that being offered encouragement to run for office is not enough to close the gender gap in ambition. In doing so, we also reveal that political parties do not appear to hold a monopoly on fostering political ambition among the general public. A variety of individuals such as community leaders, family members, and coworkers have the ability to get citizens interested in a political career. Although political parties are certainly the primary gatekeepers to elected office, our data suggest that a variety of other actors can play an active role in encouraging both men and women to seek elected office. This is particularly important as representative democracy requires hundreds, often thousands, of ordinary individuals to step forward and seek candidacy each election (Lawless and Fox 2015). This, of course, is also promising news for a variety of women’s organizations that have been engaging in encouragement campaigns that invite women to run for office (i.e., Women’s Campaign Fund, Vote Run Lead, etc.), although recent research demonstrates that online and impersonal recruitment tactics may not be particularly effective at increasing ambition among young women (Pruysers and Blais 2018).

However, our survey data reveal an important caveat. Although encouragement does not close the gender gap in general, it does have the ability to close the gap among a particular group of respondents: those individuals with no preexisting political ambition. For these unambitious women (and men), encouragement matters. Although it is true that political parties are unlikely to recruit or encourage those individuals who show no interest in pursuing a political career, our results reveal that a variety of other actors can foster a sense of political ambition. Given the dynamic nature of recruitment and ambition (Fox and Lawless 2011), family, friends, community leaders, and other organizations have the ability to lay the groundwork in getting women interested in (or at least open to) a career in politics. Party officials may then take notice and enter at a later point to find these individuals, who were not on their radar previously, are now expressing some interest in a political career. The results not only point to the crucial role that groups such as Equal Voice and the Women’s Campaign Fund can play in terms of promoting a sense of political ambition among women but also point to the importance of early childhood socialization (i.e., Mayer and Schmidt 2004) where family and friends discuss politics with girls from a young age and encourage them to consider a career in politics as a possibility, and challenge gender stereotypes more generally (Pruysers and Blais 2014).

Second, conducting an exploratory analysis of the profiles of individuals who are most likely to respond positively to encouragement, we find significant differences between men and women. Whereas personality traits seem to be the driver for women, for men, it is more about their sociodemographics. Younger politically interested men with lower incomes are the most open to encouragement to seek elected office. For women, the most consistent predictors are personality traits: low levels of emotionality and higher levels of narcissism. Interestingly, the personality characteristics that are significantly related to women being open to a political career are traits that are more likely to be found in men. We suspect that this is evidence of a clear perception that politics, especially elected office, is a masculine domain and that, to succeed, a woman needs to have certain masculine personality traits and characteristics. Women with traditionally feminine personality traits are less interested in a political career whereas those with more masculine traits are more open to a career in politics. More work in this regard, however, needs to be conducted to fully unpack the precise relationship between personality, gender, and political ambition.¹¹

Third, while we need to uncover the exact mechanism, the results of our experiment provide evidence to suggest that women respond less positively to male recruiters. Although openness to consider a political career did not differ between the control and female recruiter condition, significantly fewer women report that they would be willing to consider a political career in the male recruiter condition compared with the control. We suspect that male recruiters prime the view of politics as a masculine domain where women are outsiders and perhaps even unwelcome (despite the encouragement). These results have a number of implications for political parties seeking to field a more diverse set of candidates. First, it demonstrates the importance of having women occupying positions of authority inside of political parties. If increasing the elected presence of women in the legislature is a priority, having women in nonelected positions in the party where they are able to engage in candidate recruitment is an important step (see Cheng and Tavits 2011; Pruysers et al. 2017). Second, it offers parties with a practical strategy of recruiting women to stand for election: have more women, not necessarily men, do the asking.

Although the current study advances our understating of recruitment and political ambition in a number of important ways, there are several limitations. The first limitation is that we are only dealing with hypothetical encouragement. Respondents do not actually receive any tangible encouragement to seek political office, but instead, they simply envision a scenario in which they received encouragement. Moreover, the encouragement is impersonal (i.e., study conducted online) and perhaps vague (“party official”). Conducting an in-lab or field experiment with in-person encouragement from real (or realistic) party officials is a logical next step and one that would address both the hypothetical and impersonal limitations of the current design. A second limitation concerns the number of participants included in the current analysis. While our bivariate results in Study 1 show that the gender gap disappears when we limit our analysis to those who have never considered running for office, the reduction in sample size does not allow us to conduct proper multivariate analyses controlling for the kinds of variables included in Tables 1 and 2 where we utilized the full sample (interest, knowledge, personality traits, etc.). A larger sample would, therefore, allow for additional and more robust analyses. Third, our experimental results utilize a rather narrow pool of participants (undergraduate students), which has implications for generalizability. These findings should be replicated with different samples—community, eligibility pool, and so on. Finally, future research would benefit from adopting an intersectional approach, considering the potentially different effects for women of colour,¹² and a longitudinal design that is capable of exploring the duration and strength of the treatment and acknowledges that recruitment can be an ongoing process. Nonetheless, the paper makes a number of important contributions and opens up a variety of avenues for future research around the relationship between personality, gender, and ambition on one hand, and developing positive interventions to increase political ambition on the other.

Supplemental Material

Pruysers_Replication_Data – Supplemental material for Narcissistic Women and Cash-Strapped Men: Who Can Be Encouraged to Consider Running for Political Office, and Who Should Do the Encouraging?

Supplemental material, Pruysers_Replication_Data for Narcissistic Women and Cash-Strapped Men: Who Can Be Encouraged to Consider Running for Political Office, and Who Should Do the Encouraging? by Scott Pruysers and Julie Blais in Political Research Quarterly

Footnotes

Appendix

Have you ever considered running for office?

Would you consider running for office if the following individuals encouraged you to do so?

How often have you thought that, in the future, you might want to run for political office?

Rank the following jobs from 1 to 10 (where 1 represents the job you are most interested in having and 10 represents the job you are least interested in having)

How qualified do you feel you would be to run for elected office?

If in the future you decide to become a candidate for elected office, how likely do you think it is that you would win your first campaign?

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

Supplemental Materials

Replication data for this article are available with the manuscript on the Political Research Quarterly (PRQ) website.

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