Emotion and Responses to Norm Violators

• In Event: Conflict Processes 3 & Political Psychology Virtual Poster Session
  In Virtual Poster Session: Political Psychology Virtual Poster Session

Abstract

When do states punish serious norm violations like breaking forbidden weapons taboos? Punishment is not always forthcoming after the a norm is broken because the strategic logic of retrospective punishment is not always compelling. Emotional responses may, however, play a useful role in explaining when states to punish norm breakers. Existing research suggests that, in general, angry individuals are more likely to prefer forceful action against norm-violators while anxious individuals are less likely to do so. Beyond general action proclivities, angry decision-makers are likely to support more forceful responses because their analysis of the situation is influenced by risk acceptance, inattention to detail, and derogation of obstacles to success. Anxious people should prefer attenuated responses to norm violation because their analysis of the situation is shaped by risk aversion, attention to threats and obstacles to success, and a continuing desire for more evidence.

I test these hypotheses quantitatively by analyzing the 2013 British parliamentary debate on whether or not to attack Syria after it used chemical weapons on its own citizens—one of the most serious international norm violations in the last decade. Observing emotion in fine-grained detail is one of the fundamental problems in studies of the role of emotion in decision-making. This paper addresses the problem in a novel way—using commercially available emotion-detecting computer vision (“facial recognition”) software to generate emotion scores for each sentence spoken in the debate. These scores are then used as independent variables in two levels of analysis. First, I use them to explain speaker support and opposition for the use of force. Second, I use them to explain the characteristics’ of parliamentarians’ arguments, like the specificity of their arguments, their attention to risks and threats, and their approach to risk. These dependent variables are coded at the sentence level.

This paper contributes to the literature on emotion in politics in two ways: first, it helps identify some of the cognitive mechanisms through which emotions influence political decision-making in international relations; second, it identifies some of the strengths and challenges involved in applying a powerful new technology—computer vision--to an enduring problem for scholars of emotions in politics.

Author

• Thomas M. Dolan, University of Central Florida