Anxiety Among Marginalized Group Members Most Prone to Anxiousness

• In Event: Stigma and Constrained Political Agency

Abstract

Previous study frames the effects of anxiety among the populace in mostly neutral or even positive normative language. Affective Intelligence Theory scholars find that anxious individuals shift from autopilot-type thinking to conscious deliberation, rely- ing less on heuristics likes party and more on substance like candidate positions and candidate personal qualities. Furthermore, those seeking out new information do so in an unbiased manner. Second-generation scholars find that anxiety increases levels of trust in relevant actors and experts. Taken in full, many scholars argue that a little anxiety may bring political activation, thereby making it a normatively good thing. But anxiety is not always normatively warranted or personally beneficial. Consider veterans, African Americans living in urban areas, welfare recipients, and Medicaid recipients. Politics can be at the root of or cause much of their anxiety. How persons in these disadvantaged subgroups fare in the political landscape, and what this anxiety then means for civic attitudes like trust and efficacy, is understudied in political science. Scholars know very little about how government policies towards marginalized groups affect their levels of anxiety for politics, and what this anxiety means for political in- volvement and civic engagement by members of these groups who are now anxious. I design a survey experiment to test the relationship between political anxiety and a variety of psychological, political, and normative outcomes. I combine an oversample of members of marginalized groups with members of non-marginalized groups, testing three varying experimental conditions, each priming an alternative type of anxiety. The research design allows for inter- and intra-group comparisons, within and between experimental conditions. This setups helps researchers distinguishing between different types of anxiety-inducing stimuli, how members of different groups react to the same stimuli, and how members of the same group react to different stimuli.

Author

• Andrew Podob, Ohio State University