How Appraisals Shape Emotional Responses to Politics.

• In Event: Framing and Priming with Political Issues

Abstract

Previous work shows that emotions influence political judgement and behavior. Anger fuels participation, guilt demobilizes, anxiety sparks curiosity. But what determines our emotional reactions to emerging political issues? Appraisal theory holds that emotions are a result of evaluations of a situation along several dimensions, such as certainty, human control and responsibility. These appraisal dimensions are present in political discourse but we do not know if and how they influence emotional responses to political issues. This, however, is crucial to understanding how emotions emerge in political life and how they, ultimately, shape political behavior. We therefore test the following pre-registered hypotheses: When political issues are framed with high certainty, human control and other-responsibility, anger is evoked. Fear is evoked when issues are framed with low certainty and low human control. A well-powered and pre-registered study, which will be conducted in the Netherlands in the spring of 2020 and consisting of four rounds of a 2^3 factorial design, allows us to test these hypotheses. Emotional responses to four political issues, varying in salience (vaccine skepticism, painkiller addiction, groundwater contamination in the Netherlands and EU asylum policy) will be assessed using self-reports. Results of the study will show how we talk about politics shapes citizens’ emotional responses to political issues.

Authors

• Isabella Rebasso, University of Amsterdam

• Bert Bakker, University of Amsterdam

• Gijs Schumacher, VU University Amsterdam