Anxiety Among Marginalized Groups and What it Means for Politics

• In Event: Exploring the Experience of Anxiety in American Politics

Abstract

Previous studies report on anxiety’s potential to mobilize the electorate. Anxiety has been shown to bring political activation, to help sustain the collective action needed for civic and political participation, to increase willingness for compromise, to encourage political learning, and to increase trust in experts. But for many, government and politics underlies much of their anxiety. Consider members of marginalized groups, many of whom are chronically taxed by politics, which can rewire neural networks in the brain and which leaves them with less available mental bandwidth to conduct themselves civically and politically. Taken together, I predict members of marginalized groups respond differently to anxiety than members of non-marginalized groups. While non-marginalized persons can muster their cognitive resources to channel anxiety into action, the precarious situations of many marginalized people merits devoting their cognitive resources elsewhere, leaving them demobilized by their anxiety. I launch a series of preregistered survey experiments to test my theory among African Americans. Findings offer preliminary support for a heterogeneous understanding of anxiety’s effects. Higher levels of anxiety caused black respondents, but not white respondents, to be less likely to vote. Furthermore, anxiety was more civically mobilizing for whites than it was for blacks. The findings have broad implications for how government and politics can foster anxiety among the masses, but in particular the negative consequences it has for civic and political participation among the marginalized.

Author

• Andrew Podob, Ohio State University