Political campaigns may influence acceptance of violence against women

The first major party nomination for a woman was triumphant, but much like the 2008 Election highlighted racism within the U.S., the 2016 election highlighted the role of sexism in the U.S. as both Clinton and Trump were subject to criticism from their own parties and their opposing parties regarding their personal histories of violence against women, making it a cornerstone of the presidential election.

Nicole Johnson, assistant professor of counseling psychology at Lehigh University, set out to examine the influence, both positive and negative, of presidential campaigns, voting behavior, and candidate selection, on social views of rape culture.

She found in her latest research that political campaigns may in fact influence the acceptance of violence against women.

In the new study led by Johnson, titled: “Rape Culture and Candidate Selection in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,” published this week in the Journal of Social Politics, she and her colleagues collected and studied data from two samples of college students at the same university, pre- and post- the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election in order to determine the effect of political campaigns on how participants viewed the acceptance of violence against women.