The Effects of Men’s and Women’s Voices in Political Advertising

Campaigns disproportionately choose men to voice their political ads, but it is not clear that men’s voices are more credible or better able to persuade an audience. We employ experimental data and novel survey data to test theoretical expectations about the circumstances under which men’s and women’s voices might be more or less effective, specifically looking at how gender association of the ad issues and gender of the message recipient shape the effectiveness of the ad. We find that men’s voices are not universally more effective than women’s voices and under some circumstances may even be less effective.