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The Face of the Problem: How Subordinates Shield Executives from Blame

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2021

Sarah E. Croco ,
Jared McDonald Open the ORCID record for Jared McDonald [Opens in a new window]  and
Candace Turitto
Sarah E. Croco
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
Jared McDonald*
Affiliation:
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Candace Turitto
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: jaredmcd@stanford.edu
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Abstract

Though avoiding blame is often a goal of elected officials, there are relatively few empirical examinations of how citizens assign blame during controversies. We are particularly interested in how this process works when an executive has been caught in a lie. Using two survey experiments, we examine whether subordinates can shield executives when they act as the face of a crisis. We first leverage a real-life situation involving the family separation crisis at the US–Mexico border in 2018. Respondents who read that Donald Trump falsely claimed he could not end the practice of family separation disapprove of his dishonesty. Yet this cost disappears when Trump’s then-Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, is the primary official discussed in news stories. We then replicate these findings in a fictional scenario involving a city mayor, showing that the mayor is partially shielded from negative appraisals when the city manager lies on his behalf.

Keywords

Blame avoidanceblame sharingdishonestypublic opinionsurvey experiments
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , Winter 2022 , pp. 359 - 368
Open Practices
Open data Open materials
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

This article has earned badges for transparent research practices: Open Data and Open Materials. For details see the Data Availability Statement.

†

Coauthorship of this paper is equal and authors are listed in alphabetical order.

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