Intergroup relations are fundamentally based on the idea of ‘us’ and ‘them’, and this categorization has driven political loyalties and social ties in India, particularly the relations between Hindus and Muslims. Contemporary nationalist politics have often combined patriotic love for the country along with suspicion of minorities, particularly the Muslims. Given the history of tense relations between the Hindus and Muslims, the role of positive intergroup relations becomes paramount in sustaining peace among the groups. Based on Allport’s intergroup contact hypothesis, this article tests whether having a Muslim friend reduces prejudicial attitude among Hindus. Additionally, the article also tests the notion of education being a harbinger of liberal values and its role in reducing prejudice. The results indicate that having a Muslim friend is significantly correlated with a more positive outlook towards the Muslim community, but education does not reduce prejudice.

Partisanship is the most powerful predictor of vote choice in U.S. general elections, but primary contests pose a distinct challenge: voters must choose among co-partisans who share the same party label. This paper develops the concept of partisan credibility, comprising a candidate’s perceived prototypicality as a party member and their commitment to advancing party interests, and applies it to Republican women candidates. I argue that Republican women face a partisan credibility disadvantage in primaries. Across two pre-registered studies, I test how candidate gender and rhetorical aggression (‘crusader’ language) shape partisan credibility and vote support. In a conjoint experiment, Republican women were viewed as less prototypical and, consequently, less credible than men. In a survey experiment, however, rhetorical aggression signaled partisan commitment and mitigated this disadvantage. Structural equation modelling shows that the effect of rhetorical aggression on vote support operates primarily through the two dimensions of partisan credibility, especially perceived partisan commitment. Together, the findings suggest that partisan credibility is a two-component construct that helps explain intraparty candidate choice, and that rhetorical aggression allows Republican women to overcome gendered credibility gaps in primary elections strategically.

Women now hold nearly a third of seats in the U.S. Congress, but mothers of young children constitute only 6.8%, while fathers of young children constitute 24.2%. Do voters still hold mothers to stricter standards of parental responsibility than fathers? This article tests whether voters apply different standards of parental responsibility to mother and father candidates. Two pre-registered survey experiments, fielded during the COVID-19 pandemic, tested whether negative information about a candidate’s parenting reduces voter support and whether attempts to mitigate restores it. Negative parenting information significantly lowered candidate evaluations, and justification improved evaluations for both candidates, but the penalty and recovery were equivalent for mothers and fathers. Exploratory analyses found no gendered penalties by respondents’ partisanship, gender, or parental status. However, a follow-up question about candidates’ spouses revealed that traditional assumptions about caregiving persist. These results refine theories of gender stereotypes and parenthood in politics by identifying a boundary condition: under realistic, pandemic-era depictions of everyday parenting strain, voters judge mothers and fathers by similar standards even as cultural expectations remain gendered.

In the United States, there has been a recent resurgence of anti-transgender sentiment and legislating, which has drawn concern from an anti-genocide group. While political science and psychology consider negative outgroup attitudes, we draw on the genocide stages framework to organize our exploration of anti-transgender sentiment. We analyze support for the stages that describe the public’s attitudes, which create support or apathy towards future stages that involve elite actions. To do so, we develop novel scales and examine the effect of two common types of anti-transgender rhetoric: gender essentialism and arguments that transgender people have too much power. Contrary to our hypotheses, we find mostly null effects of these narratives, even across levels of media exposure. However, we do find significant effects of the treatment highlighting transgender peoples’ disproportionate power on support for requiring visible symbols to identify transgender people and discrimination, which is normatively concerning. These effects even tend to be concentrated among subgroups we expect to be allied with transgender people in some cases, illuminating concerns for coalition-building and political progress for transgender people. We conclude by discussing the state of public opinion about transgender people and considering negative outgroup attitudes in a genocide framework.