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Bigger picture, how do these emotional-political experiences (specifically, of anger, anxiety, and enthusiasm) affect the ways we seek out and interpret political messages and engage in political behavior?
A snapshot of the current mood:
Let's start by charting the emotions people are experiencing now, pre-election. This past weekend I asked 120 of my Berkeley intro psych students to report on their emotions surrounding the upcoming election. (Obvious disclaimer: this is far from a nationally representative sample.)
Overall, my students are reporting mostly positive, enthusiastic kinds of emotion. This is likely their first presidential election, and they're part of a notoriously politically enthusiastic campus community!
The next most common emotions are related to anxiety and
worry. Anxiety signals or reflects feelings of uncertainty and existential
threat, both of which run high during campaigns, when people are left not
knowing who will be our leader, or how that will affect our rights and our
future.
Angry emotions are weak in this sample, with very low levels
of hostility and irritability emerging. As
we’ll see below, however, anger has several effects upon political behavior.
Even though my students aren’t reporting much anger, when they DO experience
anger it likely matters.
Among my students, greater social liberalism was associated
with feeling (or at least reporting) more emotions overall, which may reflect more
socially conservative students avoiding their emotions or
withdrawing emotionally from the race. However, this is merely speculative, and I
wouldn’t read into these data - the “conservative” students here are probably
relatively liberal compared to the rest of the country.
1. How do emotions
affect the way we seek out and process political information? (Groenendyk, 2011
review)
Political ads frequently manipulate our emotions with music
and imagery, whether they induce enthusiasm with a hopeful swell of violins or
anxiety with daunting music behind a list of the threats a candidate’s campaign
poses to you and your way of life. But how do the emotions engendered by these
advertisements affect us?
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As you would likely guess, ads that induce enthusiasm
(feelings of hope, pride, and happiness) with emotional bells and whistles
(relative to control ads with the same information and no emotional cues) increase motivation to participate in
the campaign.
However, you’ll see below that this motivation does not necessarily
translate to actual political participation…
Ads that induce anxiety (feelings of fear,
nervousness, and worry) with emotional music and imagery (relative to those
with the same information and no emotional cues) increase:
- recall for information in that ad
- seeking out further information (though not remembering that new information)
- favoring ad sponsors.
In contrast, anger and its familial emotions (such as
disgust, contempt, and bitterness) close people off to political information, decreasing several forms of political
attention:
- political information seeking in general (despite increasing reported attention to political issues)
- motivation to seek out information about a candidate's platform
- desire to learn about the opposition's platform.
2. How do emotions
affect whether we actually vote or politically participate? (Valentino et al.,
2011)
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Anger: Anger may
decrease seeking out political information, but its effects on political participation
are just the opposite:
- People who were asked to focus on their feelings of anger about the election said they would be more likely to do different political behaviors (wearing a button, attending a rally, volunteering for a campaign).
- People who felt angry before the 2008 election (in a phone survey) were more likely to actually enact political behaviors (they actually wore the buttons, registered voters, and the like).
- Across 24 years of data, people who reported feeling more anger were more likely to do both costly political behaviors (attending a rally, working for a campaign, donating money) and cheap political behaviors (talking to others about voting, wearing a button).
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Taken with the effects of anger on information seeking, this
array of results could mean we have a lot of ill-informed but angry activists
running around and participating in election years (I’m sure we all know a few
of these folks!). Anger is a powerful political motivator.
Anxiety: Feeling
anxious increases information seeking, but appears to spur behavior to a lesser
extent than anger:
- People who focused on their feelings of anxiety about the election were no more likely to say they would do politically active behaviors.
- People who said they felt more anxious before the 2008 election (phone survey) were actually less likely to enact political behaviors.
- And when we separate political behaviors into its costly and cheap forms, researchers find – across 24 years of data – that anxiety predicted doing more cheap political behaviors (button wearing, e.g.) but not costly behaviors (such as donating money).
Thus, though the anxious among us may avidly seek political
information and play with political ideas, their anxiety may actually demobilize their political behaviors. Feeling
paralyzed with indecision and worry may have real consequences for political
participation.
Enthusiasm: Enthusiasm
increases motivation to participate, but
the evidence that it predicts actual participation is mixed:
- People who focused on their feelings of enthusiasm about the election were no more likely to say they would enact political behaviors.
- People who said they felt enthusiastic prior to the 2008 election were no more likely to enact political behaviors.
- But big picture, across 24 years of election data, enthusiasm does predict both costly and cheap forms of political engagement - its effects on these behaviors are just weaker than anger’s.
Thus, though enthusiasm spurs motivation, its effects on
participation are relatively feeble. Maybe its effects are more fleeting than
anger’s, or perhaps it has to be paired with some other characteristic,
emotion, or context for its impact to emerge.
In sum, to
understand the effects of emotions on political thought and behavior, we must
consider discrete types of emotions (rather than the global impact of feeling
positively versus negatively). It seems that anger, anxiety, and enthusiasm
each have unique effects upon how we seek out information and how we engage
with our political system.
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The emotion literature would also suggest that even emotions
that are not directly relevant to the
election will likely shape political thought and action in the coming 24 hours.
This means we may see people who are pissed off about any number of things
hauling themselves to the voting booths. And if you’re feeling unmotivated to
hit the polls tomorrow, just focus for a while on how much you hate the
opposition! There may be an upside to polarization and anger in politics: increased
political engagement.
Do you think emotions inform your political information seeking? How about your political behavior? What other emotions do you think are relevant and what might their effects be upon these outcomes?
The papers:
Groenendyk, E. (2011). Current Emotion Research in Political Science: How Emotions Help Democracy Overcome its Collective Action Problem Emotion Review, 3 (4), 455-463 DOI: 10.1177/1754073911410746
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