Masking or lexicographic preferences? Using conjoint experiments to distinguish between two fundamental theories of choice

Many studies on candidate choice and other political preferences suggest that the effect of one attribute may mask the effect of another attribute, which the respondent has no information about. If, for instance, respondents lack information about party membership, they may infer that female candidates are Democrats, which would lead to biased estimates of the pure effect of candidate gender. We propose an alternative explanation—namely that respondents have lexicographic preferences—and we present an empirical test using conjoint experiments to distinguish between what we call pure masking and lexicographic preferences. We illustrate our method using data on the effect of gender, race, and party in candidate choice and replicate the results in a preregistered conjoint experiment. We offer recommendations for researchers studying candidate and political choices.