The interplay between political predispositions, partisan media consumption, and beliefs about female presidential candidates offers a revealing window into contemporary electoral dynamics. A groundbreaking comparative analysis focusing on South Korea and the United States during pivotal election cycles demonstrates how political ideology and media environments collectively shape public attitudes toward female leadership in the highest office. This research, leveraging national survey data from two culturally and politically distinct democracies during elections featuring actual female presidential candidates, challenges prevailing assumptions about ideological stances on gender qualifications and underscores the potent role of partisan media in molding political belief systems.
At the heart of the findings lies the counterintuitive phenomenon that political affiliation, rather than traditional sex-role stereotypes, governs perceptions about a woman’s readiness to assume presidential power. In South Korea’s 2012 presidential election, where a female candidate represented the conservative party, individuals identifying as strong conservatives exhibited more favorable beliefs toward a female presidency than their liberal counterparts. Conversely, Korean liberals expressed skepticism about the nation’s readiness to elect a woman. This polarization runs opposite to conventional beliefs about liberal progressiveness regarding gender equality, suggesting that the social categorization tied to political identity can supersede generalized gender attitudes when partisanship intensifies.
A parallel pattern emerged in the United States during the 2016 presidential election, where the Democratic Party nominated a female candidate for the first time in a major party. Here, strong liberals embraced the possibility of a female president more openly, embracing the symbolic and substantive implications of gender representation in executive leadership. On the other hand, conservatives and Republicans were more inclined to doubt electoral readiness for a woman president, illustrating how partisan loyalties and ideological predispositions filter gender-related beliefs. Notably, these patterns reinforce the tenets of the belief gap hypothesis, highlighting that political ideology and partisanship serve as more reliable predictors of political convictions than educational attainment when examining contentious political subjects.
Beyond intrinsic political orientations, the study reveals the formidable influence of partisan media as an echo chamber further entrenching or shifting beliefs about female presidential viability. In South Korea, consumption of liberal-leaning media correlated with increased skepticism toward the feasibility of a female president, whereas engagement with conservative media fostered more positive beliefs, mirroring the ideological alignment of the female candidate’s party. Similarly, in the United States, reliance on right-leaning outlets such as Fox News corresponded with negative perceptions of the Democratic female candidate’s prospects, while viewers of left-leaning networks like CNN were more optimistic about the country’s readiness for female leadership. These findings expose the feedback loop whereby partisan media reinforce existing ideologies, amplifying polarized interpretations of the same political realities.
This dual-country validation of partisan media’s role deepens understanding of how media environments shape cognitive schemas related to candidates’ gender, potentially fueling attitudinal polarization. Exposure to ideologically consonant media not only validates ingroup preferences but also magnifies outgroup disparagement, particularly in highly salient electoral contexts. Analogous studies on climate change skepticism and racial or religious misperceptions about political figures have illustrated similar media-driven belief alignment, affirming the media’s power in constructing filtered political realities. These dynamics demonstrate that during election seasons, media sources do not merely inform the public; they actively sculpt the framework through which citizens appraise candidate identities.
Crucially, beliefs about female presidency emerged as significant mediators connecting partisan media consumption to voting intention. For American voters, positive beliefs about a woman president—reinforced by frequent liberal media exposure—were strongly associated with greater likelihood to vote for the female Democratic candidate and correspondingly decreased support for the male Republican opponent. Conversely, conservative media consumption predicted negative beliefs about female presidency readiness, which in turn heightened voting intention for the Republican candidate. This mediation illustrates how partisan media function not just as information conduits but as psychological mechanisms triggering heuristic processing that links candidate attributes to electoral choices, embodying the motive of social belonging embedded within partisanship.
This theoretical lens situates voting within broader social identity frameworks, where citizens seek affiliation with ideological communities reflected both in media use and political preference. Thus, partisan media consumption magnifies perceived partisan divides, turning abstract political orientations into tangible beliefs that directly influence ballot decisions. The implications of this are profound; it suggests that electoral behavior may be less a reflection of objective candidate evaluations and more an embodiment of identity-affirming narratives fostered by selective media ecosystems. Such cognitive reinforcement loops underscore challenges in mitigating political polarization and fostering open democratic deliberation.
Furthermore, the research underscores a critical departure from traditional assumptions about the uniformity of gender-related political beliefs across ideological spectra. The unexpected tendency of liberals in South Korea to doubt female presidential readiness, contrasted with conservative readiness, suggests the potency of campaign-specific partisan contextualization in reshaping demographic stereotype endorsements. Social categorization processes applied within political contestation can invert or reshape general gender attitudes, reflecting the dynamic and situational nature of political cognition. This challenges simplistic narratives about liberal-progressive versus conservative-regressive divides on gender issues and calls for nuanced inquiry into how political environments calibrate social group stereotypes.
An additional insight from this study is its methodological innovation in linking candidate gender beliefs to concrete voting intentions via psychological mediators, an area previously underexplored in belief gap research. While the belief gap hypothesis has illuminated ideological variances in contested issue beliefs, this research pioneers the investigation of demographic characteristic beliefs as political heuristics influencing candidate preference. It provides robust empirical backing for the notion that partisan media exposure cultivates particular beliefs that act as shortcuts in the complex decision-making processes of elections, reducing the cognitive burden on voters while creating distinct ideological narratives about candidate suitability.
Moreover, the study provocatively suggests that partisan media-induced beliefs extend beyond mere candidate evaluation to inform broader social judgments and stereotyping processes based on candidates’ demographic markers such as gender. The alignment of stereotypical perceptions with partisan media narratives underscores the media’s role in sustaining or challenging societal prejudices within the political arena. Such media-driven social cognition has ramifications for democratic representation, potentially reinforcing barriers for underrepresented groups seeking political office, and highlights the intricate interdependencies between media framing, group stereotypes, and electoral behavior.
This research extends the empirical dialogue on media–politics intersections by illuminating mechanisms through which polarized media ecosystems foster belief reinforcement that escalates political division. Prior scholarship has identified perceived opinion climates as intermediaries in polarization, wherein repeated exposure to like-minded media engenders the impression that one’s views are majority positions, intensifying attitudinal rigidity. The current findings add a complementary pathway, showing that partisan media shape candidate-related beliefs that translate directly into behavioral intentions during elections. As such, the role of partisan media extends beyond attitudinal formation to encompass embodied political actions, making it a critical focus for understanding democratic engagement and polarization trajectories.
Despite its contributions, the study identifies avenues for further empirical refinement—including experimental manipulation of media exposure to parse causal mechanisms more definitively. The non-comparability of samples across the two countries and the temporal distance of both surveys from the present day also signal the need for contemporary, cross-cultural research with harmonized methodologies to assess evolving media landscapes and political contexts. Such future investigations could delve into content analyses of partisan media representations of female politicians to unpack narrative strategies that produce observed belief patterns, enriching theoretical models of media influence.
In sum, this research contributes unprecedented evidence that political predispositions and partisan media consumption jointly sculpt gender-related political beliefs with consequential effects on electoral participation. By integrating insights across two distinct democratic societies, the study elucidates the complex processes by which identity, media, and cognition intersect to drive political polarization and voter behavior in the contemporary digital and media age. These findings demand renewed attention from scholars, policymakers, and media practitioners committed to fostering inclusive political discourse and equitable representation in democratic institutions.
Subject of Research: Political predispositions, partisan media consumption, and political beliefs regarding female presidential candidates in South Korea and the United States.
Article Title: Predispositions, partisan media, and political beliefs about female presidency in South Korea and the United States.
Article References:
Kim, Y., Jang, S. Predispositions, partisan media, and political beliefs about female presidency in South Korea and the United States.
Humanit Soc Sci Commun 12, 1236 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05346-1
Image Credits: AI Generated
