Abstract
Many observers have noticed the importance of anger in contemporary politics, particularly with reference to populism. This article addresses the question under which conditions people become angry about a specific aspect of their lives: their personal financial situation. Specifically, it asks if populist anti-elite rhetoric has a causal influence on anger and if this influence differs across socio-economic groups. The theoretical expectation is that populist rhetoric allows people to externalize responsibility for an unfavorable financial situation and thereby to turn negative self-conscious emotions into anger. The argument is tested with original survey data from France, Germany, and the United States. The empirical analysis yields three main insights. First, negative emotional reactions to respondents' personal finances (and anger in particular) are surprisingly widespread in all three countries. Second, there is a pronounced socio-economic gradient in anger and other negative emotions. Third, and most importantly, randomly exposing participants to (mildly) populist anti-elite rhetoric causes considerably higher expressed anger about one's financial situation in France and Germany, but less so in the United States. This suggests a causal role of populist rhetoric in stirring 'pocketbook anger'. This is true in particular in the middle classes. The notion that populist rhetoric reduces negative self-conscious emotions, such as shame, is not supported by the data.
Highlights
Under which conditions do people become angry about their financial situation? Because feeling anger is intertwined with the motivation to identify and attack a culprit, it can fundamentally change how people connect their pocketbook to politics
This article has three messages that future research on the micro-political implications of socio-economic problems should take into account
Anger might be precisely what makes the difference between mobilizing and de-mobilizing tendencies resulting from socio-economic problems (Aytaç et al, in press)
Summary
Under which conditions do people become angry about their financial situation? Because feeling anger is intertwined with the motivation to identify and attack a culprit, it can fundamentally change how people connect their pocketbook to politics. It has been argued that negative emotional reactions are intense if relatively high but precarious socio-economic status becomes threatened (Mols & Jetten, 2017) Beyond these considerations, the present article refrains from making a general argument about whether people in the lower or middle classes are more prone to respond to populist rhetoric with anger. The only exceptions are high subjective positions (interestingly, French participants were reluctant to place themselves in the two highest status categories; they only comprised nine cases and had to be dropped from the analysis) It seems that there is considerable potential for pocketbook anger across society and that the emotion measurement is flexible enough to capture the probably quite different sources of anger in the middle and the lower classes. Political commitments appear to be more important moderators of the treatment effects than socio-economic position
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