Role Of Emotions In Politics Research Articles

The politics of resentment: what is it and how is it mobilized by populist radical right-wing parties in different contexts?

The role of emotions in politics is drawing increasing scholarly attention. Yet, despite this heightened interest, the ways in which politicians concretely appeal to emotions of their target audience are still blurry. Let aside how they do so in different contexts. This article focuses on an affect that is frequently mentioned as the key driver explaining the electoral appeal of populist radical right-wing parties (PRRPs): resentment. In that respect, several authors have used the term “the politics of resentment,” even though the exact definition of resentment often remains unclear. In this article, we theorize what resentment precisely is and how it is used politically, and hypothesize how it is mobilized in different ways by PRR parties in different contexts. Empirically, then, we employ content analysis to study a corpus of party documents of PRRPs in three West and two East European countries from 2004 onwards and identify three types of resentment mobilized by the radical right: (1) redistributive resentment; (2) recognitory resentment; and (3) retributive resentment. Despite being expressed in a more heterogeneous way than we theoretically expected, these forms of resentment share important commonalities that, we argue, can help to better understand the electoral appeal of radical right-wing parties.

A Meta‐Analytic Assessment of the Effects of Emotions on Political Information Search and Decision‐Making

AbstractWith increasing interest in the role of emotions in politics across the discipline, we review theoretical and methodological approaches utilized by political psychologists. Although theorists have been highlighting the role of emotions in politics for thousands of years, modern political psychologists primarily employ Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen's (2000) affective intelligence theory to grapple with the consequences of emotions for political attitudes and behavior. We present results from a formal meta‐analytic assessment exploring the strength of the empirical evidence for the relationship between emotions and political information search and decision strategies. Overall, we find weak but statistically reliable evidence linking anger, anxiety, and enthusiasm to information search when search is self‐reported, but when information search is objectively measured, we find no link between it and anxiety or enthusiasm. Surprisingly, we also find little reliable evidence linking emotions to differential reliance on heuristics or more evidence‐based criteria in voter decision‐making.

Electoral Consolidation Through Islamic Populism and Religious Grievance: The Case of Transformation of Hagia Sophia in Turkey

The transformation of Hagia Sophia into a mosque in 2020 has been one of the major topics of public debate in Turkey. Based on the literature on populism and the role of emotions in politics, this paper analyzes the case of Hagia Sophia by suggesting a split from economy-based explanations of populism. It is argued that the case of the transformation of Hagia Sophia as a populist maneuver can be analyzed through historical context that shapes and affects the emotion of religious grievance in contemporary Turkey. This paper discusses how the AKP and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan operationalize the case of the transformation of Hagia Sophia through religious grievances as a populist discourse to establish electoral consolidation in the wake of two large-scale crises.

Dangerous or Goodly Passions: The Role of Emotion in Parliament and Politics

Dangerous or Goodly Passions: The Role of Emotion in Parliament and Politics

Expanding our thinking about discrete emotions and politics.

In recent decades, political psychologists have given a lot of attention to the role of emotions in politics. While there have been several different research programs, the dominant paradigm has been set by affective intelligence theory (AIT), developed by George Marcus, Russell Neuman, and Michael Mackuen. AIT has helped explain many puzzles in understanding how emotions influence political decisions, as any good paradigm should. At the same time, I argue it has also had the effect of limiting broader research into the range of discrete emotions, especially contempt. While recognizing the value of AIT, I call for more research that goes beyond its boundaries, showing through several recent studies how a focus on the additional effects of contempt can improve our understanding of voter decision-making.

Anger, Fear, and Echo Chambers: The Emotional Basis for Online Behavior

Emotions, such as anger and fear, have been shown to influence people’s political behavior. However, few studies link emotions specifically to how people debate political issues and seek political information online. In this article, we examine how anger and fear are related to politics-oriented digital behavior, attempting to bridge the gap between the thus far disconnected literature on political psychology and the digital media. Based on survey data, we show that anger and fear are connected to distinct behaviors online. Angry people are more likely to engage in debates with people having both similar and opposing views. They also seek out information confirming their views more frequently. Anxious individuals, by contrast, tend to seek out information contradicting their opinions. These findings reiterate predictions made in the extant literature concerning the role of emotions in politics. Thus, we argue that anger reinforces echo chamber dynamics and trench warfare dynamics in the digital public sphere, while fear counteracts these dynamics.

Deplorables: Emotions, Political Sophistication, and Political Intolerance

While scholars have shown strong interest in the role of emotions in politics, questions remain about the connections between emotions and political intolerance. First, it is not clear which emotion (if any) is likely to produce intolerance toward one’s disliked groups, with different studies favoring hatred, anger, or fear. Second, it is unclear whether these effects of emotion are moderated by sophistication, as some conventional political thought argues. Do the less-sophisticated rely on emotions when making judgments, therefore being less tolerant than sophisticates, who rely on reason? Here, we test both hypotheses using a large representative sample Americans. We find that hatred, anger, and fear are significantly but only modestly related to political intolerance. Moreover, the effects of emotions on intolerance are not consistently stronger among the unsophisticated. These findings provide little support for the conventional assumption that the less-sophisticated rely on their emotions in making political judgments.

"A Red Card against Sex Tourism": Sex Panics, Public Emotions, and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil

This article examines the campaigns against sex tourism and sex trafficking that have emerged with the advent of several mega-sporting events in Brazil. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Natal, one of the twelve host cities of the 2014 World Cup, it focuses on the appeal to emotions in mobilization against sex trafficking and sex tourism. Despite the recent turn to emotions in social sciences, including the role of emotions in politics, there is a dearth of study examining the intersections of emotions and moral panics. Yet expressions of disgust, anger, rage, or outrage commonly accompany moral panics issues. This article engages with how campaigns against sex tourism and sex trafficking associated with the 2014 World Cup materialize through emotional tropes iterated and reiterated in public spaces, or sex panics scripts. More specifically, this article identifies various scripts—the sexually innocent yet violated child, the bad gringo, and the enslaved woman—and points to what gives them their traction. Taken together, these emotional tropes are constitutive of an affective logic that both conflates justice with punishment and repression, and makes certain oppressive interventions and fraught alliances "feel right"—that is, publicly thinkable, possible, and acceptable.

Why do all our feelings about politics matter?

This article examines disenchantment with democracy and the role of emotions in politics. Its contribution is to develop our understanding of emotions in situations of political disenchantment. It is argued that (1) there are a wide variety of emotions involved in political disaffection which need explication, (2) it is important to consider the dynamic of political motivation and demotivation and (3) we should be concerned about political disenchantment, not only because citizens are becoming negative and disengaging but because the concerns of some raise important issues with justice and equality in democracies. Greater attention to the cultivation of emotions, such as hope, in public life might help us to understand, (re)kindle, and sustain people’s affection for, and engagement in, politics.

Evolution of views on the role of emotions in politics in foreign sociopolitical science

Evolution of views on the role of emotions in politics in foreign sociopolitical science

Fear of Electoral Violence and its Impact on Political Knowledge in Sub-Saharan Africa

The literature on electoral violence has focused on its causes as well as its scope, ignoring the implications for citizens trying to practice their political citizenship. Informed citizens are a central part of a functioning democracy. The emotive response to violence may play an important role here. This article contributes to a deeper understanding of how the voter responds to violence. Recent work on the role of emotions in politics has demonstrated its positive role for cognition, as fear can increase the individual’s propensity to amass information and reevaluate attitudes and behavior. This is tested in a hitherto unexamined context, namely, Sub-Saharan Africa, using the Afrobarometer survey (20 different countries). In general, political fear is a significant predictor of political knowledge, but in the opposite direction compared to the hypothesis. The affective intelligence hypothesis only receives partial support using this data, namely, in countries with high levels of political violence.

Protests, emotions and democracy: theoretical insights from the Indignados movement

The emergence of protest movements, such as theIndignadosandOccupy Wall Street, is one of the most remarkable political occurrences in recent years. Social scientists have immediately started analysing these phenomena, highlighting the broad political implications for contemporary democracies, and especially the disaffection towards political institutions and the financial system they reflect. This article argues that these phenomena should be considered through the lens of the broad role of emotions in politics. Whilst scholars have recently shown increased attention to the role of emotions in politics, this article advances some suggestions for a theoretical and crossdisciplinary inquiry, which can contribute to the connection between protest event analysis and normative political theory. Quoting particularly theIndignados’ slogans and mottos, this article draws attention to the central function of emotions – especially anger and fear – in motivating people to engage in political action and in the construction of political order. Specifically, this article shows how emotions play in the construction of the political subject –the people– as well as in today's struggle for democratic legitimacy and the resistance to the emptying of democracy by globalmarket forces.

Juncture interview: Martha Nussbaum

Martha Nussbaum defends the role of emotion in politics, addressing the challenges of cultural nation‐building and fostering widespread support for progressive ideals and public institutions.

Recognition, feelings of injustice and claim justification: a case study of deaf people's storytelling on the internet

This paper argues that Honneth's theory of recognition opens promising venues for exploring the role of emotion in politics, particularly when issues of injustice are at stake. While endorsing Honneth's view that ‘feelings of injustice’ are an important source for intelligibility of injustice, and that disadvantaged individuals need to build a ‘shared interpretative framework’ in struggles for recognition, this article contends that a more nuanced account of discursive justification is required to deal with dissent and moral disagreement. As a response to this problem, we suggest that Honneth's approach of subjective reaction to injury as violation of conditions to practical identity can be brought together with notions of discursive justification in the Habermasian fashion. Through an empirically based analysis – using storytelling of deaf people gathered in two virtual environments: (a) the website of the main Brazilian organization for deaf persons (FENEIS), and (b) Orkut, an online social network – this paper evinces that subjects not only articulate feelings of injustice or claims for recognition in everyday experience, but also usually engage in interpretation, judgment and justification of such claims. Results show that Honneth's theory of recognition, when articulated with a notion of discursive justification, can better equip scholars concerned with practices that aim to overcome injustice.

The Political Relevance of Emotions: “Reassessing” Revisited

Ladd and Lenz (2008) question a central claim of affective intelligence theory (AIT), namely that anxiety affects political judgments indirectly by reducing the role of predispositions and increasing the role of contemporary information. They claim that alternative hypotheses, especially the notion that emotions are simply rationalizations of political preferences, better explain the role of emotion in politics. Their ultimate conclusions, however, rest on an overly narrow view of both theory and evidence. Even if one accepts Ladd and Lenz's reanalysis of survey data, there is insufficient evidence to cast aside either AIT or the hypothesis that anxiety affects the mode of political judgment. AIT explains a broad range of political relationships that are unchallenged by the reassessment and which cannot be explained by the offered alternatives. Moreover, numerous experimental studies reject the alternative explanations in favor of an exogenous, often interactive role for anxiety. AIT will surely require amendment, if not abandonment, someday. Competing theories of emotion already exist and, unlike the alternative championed by Ladd and Lenz, these theories too suggest a meaningful role for emotion in political judgment and behavior. For now, given all of the research to date, AIT is a robust competitor, scarcely in need of being “salvaged.” Burgeoning research on the political relevance of emotions will benefit from further debates, replications, and extensions, as long as new claims and evidence are put in proper perspective.

Current Emotion Research in History: Or, Doing History from the Inside Out

The history of the emotions first developed as a field of inquiry in Europe. It took root in the United States only in the 1980s. Today, the field has expanded dramatically. Historians of the emotions share the conviction that culture gives some shape to emotional life and that consequently, feelings vary across time and culture. Working on that assumption, recent historical works have investigated the changing role of emotions in politics, economics, and private life. There are a number of contentious issues within the field, including the much debated relationship between words and feelings, the pace and direction of change in emotional culture, and the question of the continuity of emotional experience and categories over centuries.