How Emotions Drive US and Russian Popular Responses to Anti-Russia Sanctions

• In Event: Poster Session: STEP 2 & New Perspectives within Political Psychology
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: New Perspectives within Political Psychology

Abstract

Economic sanctions have become a major instrument of international politics. However, the effectiveness of economic sanctions depends on both public opinions in the targeted country and the country that imposes sanctions. We explore whether certain emotions—fear and anger—were associated with specific attitudes towards the sanctions against Russia in 2022. Existing literature in psychology and political science has demonstrated that fear and anger provoke different risk perceptions and risk attitudes and, in turn, change political attitudes, such as support for a war. Therefore, we propose that the fear of the consequences of the economic sanctions, such as inflation and shortage, resulted in negative attitudes toward the sanctions among Americans and negative attitudes toward the invasion among Russians. In contrast, the American citizens angered by the invasion were more likely to support the sanctions, and the Russian citizens angered by the sanctions were more likely to support the invasion. Using the data from Twitter and VKontakte, we apply emotion analysis and automated text classification to measure the emotions and attitudes toward the sanctions in Americans and Russians. In the preliminary analysis, there is weak evidence that the tweets supporting sanctions were also angrier, which corresponds to our expectations.

Authors

• Pei-Hsun Hsieh, University of Pennsylvania

• Guzel Garifullina, Stanford University

• Moeed Baradaran