Periodic Reporting for period 2 - HotPolitics (Politics isn’t cool, it’s hot! Do emotions influence political attitudes? )
Berichtszeitraum: 2018-09-04 bis 2019-09-03
In this project, I show that show that people respond with more arousal and more negative affect in response to political messages that they disagree with. Moreover, I find that arousal and negative affect influence attitude change. When arousal or negative affect increases people change their attitudes more. At the same time, self-reported measure of emotions in responses to political messages were measured. We find that only anxiety – but not anger or enthusiasm – influences attitude change. When self-reported anxiety goes up, people change their attitudes more. These findings show that both physiological and cognitive-emotional responses to political communication influence political attitudes. I fail to find any evidence that these processes are different for people on the left and right.
The findings of this project show that people respond physiological to political communication. The responses are conditional upon the extremity of a persons’ attitudes and their opinion on the issue. The physiological responses to political communication trigger attitude change and this process is independent from that what people say they feel towards politics.
The findings of this project have been discussed with academics at workshops and conferences. The general public could participate in lab demonstrations. Elite decision makers and journalists have been informed in workshops. The finding have been widely discussed in national and international media.
By the end of this project, I was able to answer the overarching research question: Do emotional responses to political messages influence citizens’ political attitudes? This project impacts the research agenda on the physiological responses to politics because the three major contributions outlined above will push this literature an important step forward. This project also impact society because there is contemporary society a lot of attention for the angry or anxious citizen. I have been able to inform people, policy makers, journalists and politicians when and what causes people to experience emotions and how these emotion influence citizens’ opinions.