TABLE OF CONTENTS
Theorizing Affect's Effects - W. Russell Neuman, George E. Marcus, Ann N. Crigler, Michael Mackuen
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0001
[political behavior, human emotions, political thinking, political affect, cognition, public policy, discrete models, valence models, multidimensional models]
This chapter, which discusses the varying centrality of emotional concepts in theorizing about political behavior, also addresses the character of the phenomenon of emotion itself, particularly the question of its structure. It then considers the role played by human emotions in a theory of political thinking and behavior, and how affect and cognition structurally linked, as well as presenting a brief review of how the dynamics of political affect might be applied in political practice and perhaps public policy. Affect is the evolved cognitive and physiological response to the detection of personal significance. Discrete models, valence models, and multidimensional models are three schools of thought in characterizing the dimensionality of affect. The new methodologies, especially those associated with brain functioning and convergent findings from multiple methodologies, add new gravitas and perhaps urgency to theory building and testing in this domain. (pages 1 - 20)
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PART I. PUTTING THE AFFECT IN PERSPECTIVE
Philosophical Psychology with Political Intent - Michael A. Neblo
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0002
[emotions, political psychology, Plato, Aristotle, David Hume, political theory, descriptive psychology, psychological naturalism, religious dogmatism]
This chapter describes how three philosophers' thinking about the emotions continues to be relevant for political psychology, arguing that philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and David Hume were systematic thinkers who grounded their ethical and political theories in a descriptive psychology of human experience. Plato's analysis of regime types in terms of modal motivating emotions points toward a kind of comparative or historical political psychology. Aristotle tries to work more cooperatively with human nature as he finds it in his psychology, and the consequence is that he countenances regimes which strike us as more plausible as well. Hume's thoroughgoing psychological naturalism, along with his attack on religious dogmatism, were in themselves part of his political theory. The impulse to theorize in systematic ways, to do psychology with political intent, serves to advance both the science of psychology and the political goals that it might serve. (pages 25 - 47)
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Political Cognition as Social Cognition: Are We All Political Sophisticates? - Darren Schreiber
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0003
[political cognition, Aristotle, human nature, Niccolo Machiavelli, human intelligence, mirror neuron, Machiavellian intelligence, theory of mind, everyday politics]
This chapter, which introduces Aristotle's arguments about human nature and Niccolo Machiavelli's thoughts about how human intelligence developed with the need to be more politically astute than one's rivals, hypothesizes about the neural architecture needed by people to navigate everyday political life. The kinds of political cognition that political scientists usually study, namely, thoughts about values, policies, coalitions, and leaders on the state, national, or international level, have co-opted the mental apparatus evolved for solving the problems of “everyday politics.” The development of the mirror neuron has been a critical early step in the direction of Machiavellian intelligence. The capacities for theory of mind and for social evaluation enable fruitful political cognition in the context of everyday politics. Accounting for the biological foundations of political attitudes can lead to conceptualizations that are richer in their implications for moral thinking and more familiar because they comport with the everyday experience. (pages 48 - 70)
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Emotional Processing and Political Judgment: Toward Integrating Political Psychology and Decision Neuroscience - Michael L. Spezio, Ralph Adolphs
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0004
[political psychology, decision neuroscience, decision making, social judgment, cognition, emotion, emotional processing]
This chapter, which connects political psychology and decision neuroscience by addressing the challenges to the development of theory about the role of emotions in decision making, also considers the recent work in areas relating emotional processes to prudential decision making and reward, as well as social judgment. The dichotomy between cognition and emotion is described. In addition, a proposal that seeks to develop the concept of emotional processing within the context of complex decision making is reported. The methodological challenges strongly indicate that construction of inferential models of information processing in the brain needs to proceed by an integrative approach. Judgment and decision making in the social realm demonstrates some of the strongest links with emotional processing. The outlook for productive collaborative work between decision neuroscientists and political psychologists is promising. (pages 71 - 96)
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PART II. MICRO MODELS
The Primacy of Affect in Political Evaluations - Dan Cassino, Milton Lodge
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0005
[emotion, affect, mind, political science, psychology, judgments, memory-based processing]
This chapter evaluates how emotion and, in particular, affect serve to organize the mind, and reviews existing research concerning the ways this organization leads to bias at all stages of the evaluative process. It then applies a simple experimental study to show how the process outlined leads individuals to integrate information about a political candidate. The consequences of these theories for political science and for psychology in general are reported. Emotion certainly serves to alter the course of the evaluative process but, in doing so, may make it more, not less, efficient. The capacity of the individual to overcome biases by memory-based processing should be short-lived, and judgments based on potentially flawed emotional responses should become dominant. It is noted that affect may be more efficient than other means of processing, and may be the only avenue open for many citizens. (pages 101 - 123)
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The Third Way: The Theory of Affective Intelligence and American Democracy - Michael Mackuen, George E. Marcus, W. Russell Neuman, Luke Keele
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0006
[affective intelligence, political science, voter competence, political geography, political campaigns, elections, political psychology]
This chapter provides the most recent stage of evolution of one of the earliest theories in political science—the theory of affective intelligence—and introduces a restatement of the theory, contrasting its claims to those of the principal competitors in political science and an array of empirical findings. The theory of affective intelligence holds that people have two basic decision strategies available, and that they easily move from one to the other and back again. It argues that voter competence is dynamically responsive to the strategic character of the political geography. Effective political campaigns often turn on their ability to recruit support from the hostile opposition. The theory of affective intelligence substantially revises the conventional wisdom about the periodicity of elections, and also provides a micro-account of a political psychology that sustains a normative portrait of democracy which is more encouraging than has previously been thought plausible. (pages 124 - 151)
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Affective Intelligence and Voting: Information Processing and Learning in a Campaign - David P. Redlawsk, Andrew J. W. Civettini, Richard R. Lau
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0007
[dynamic process tracing, political campaign, political candidate, information processing, learning, anxiety, anger, affective intelligence, election campaigns]
This chapter uses dynamic tracing methodology to analyze the way emotion functions in a political campaign. It specifically describes how initial feeling toward a political candidate affects the evaluation of new information and how emotional reactions to that information influence learning. Hypothesis 1 indicates that specific issue positions taken by preferred and rejected candidates can yield affective responses in voters. As the distance between a voter's issue preference and a candidate's issue position gets larger, anxiety or anger is in fact generated. Hypothesis 2 tests whether activation of the surveillance system results in more careful processing. Hypotheses 3a and 3b suggest that heightened anxiety leads to learning. According to affective intelligence, the role of enthusiasm should be relatively neutral. Data collected via dynamic process tracing studies can offer insights that are unattainable by survey research or experiments that fail to account for the dynamic nature of election campaigns. (pages 152 - 179)
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Identities, Interests, and Emotions: Symbolic versus Material Wellsprings of Fear, Anger, and Enthusiasm - Ted Braider, Nicholas A. Valentino
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0008
[immigration, enthusiasm, fear, anger, U.S. citizens, prejudice, Republican Party, nationalism]
This chapter deals with the issue of whether emotion serves to improve the human capacity for judgment or to degrade it, and also reports the antecedents of emotional reactions to an important contemporary political issue: immigration. Enthusiasm and fear are the major emotions of affective intelligence theory. Moreover, the individual precursors of enthusiasm, fear, and anger about immigration among U.S. citizens are explored. Anti-Hispanic prejudice is strongly and negatively associated with enthusiasm about increased immigration, whereas Republican Party identification predicts a more modest but still rather sizeable decline in enthusiasm. It shows that nationalism is positively associated with enthusiasm. Moreover, the relationship between prejudice toward Hispanics and all three emotions is consistently strong. In fact, prejudice is the most potent predictor by far in every case. (pages 180 - 201)
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On the Distinct Political Effects of Anxiety and Anger - Leonie huddy, Feldman Stanley, Cassese Erin
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0009
[anger, anxiety, Iraq war, terrorism, Saddam Hussein, terrorists, anti-war protesters, valence model]
This chapter tries to differentiate between anger and anxiety as distinct negative reactions to the Iraq war and explores their unique political effects. The distinct effects of anger and anxiety make clear the need to better understand their political consequences. The link between negative emotion and deeper levels of thought does not appear to extend to anger. Complex negative objects such as war and terrorism elicit diverse negative reactions. Americans had related but distinct feelings of anger and anxiety toward the war, terrorists, Saddam Hussein, and anti-war protesters. As anxiety and anger increase, respondents are more likely to report thinking about the Iraq war, talking about it, and, to a more limited extent, attending to national television news and newspapers. In general, the results raise serious concerns about the prevailing two-dimensional valence model of emotion. (pages 202 - 230)
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Don't Give Up Hope: Emotions, Candidate Appraisals, and Votes - Marion R. Just, Ann N. Crigler, Todd L. Belt
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0010
[emotion, hope, candidates, voting, 1996 election campaign, fear, candidate appraisals]
This chapter concentrates on the effect of conscious consideration of emotion as a vital domain in which emotion can play out its role in human affairs. It is suggested that hope is a powerful coping mechanism that can mold perceptions about candidates and bias information search. It is also the key emotion in voting decisions and is essential for the democratic process. As hope for a candidate increases over time, individuals become more consistent and appraise all of the candidate's traits and issue positions in positive ways and the opponent's in negative ways. The 1996 election campaign showed the significance of hope, its compensatory relation to fear, and the consistency of hope and fear with candidate appraisals. The evidence about the role of emotions and appraisal in campaigns demonstrated that campaigns serve important informational functions. (pages 231 - 260)
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Part III. MACRO MODELS
The Road to Public Surveillance: Breeching Attention Thresholds - Doris A. Graber
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0011
[attention, arousal, fear, anxiety, dangers, surveillance system, political news]
This chapter forces emotion-driven attention out of the laboratory and into the buzzing confusion of everyday life. The key to resolving the attention-arousal puzzle seems to lie in producing fear- or anxiety-arousing content and alerting the audience to the impending dangers. It is noted that stories that have many or powerful fear-arousing elements are potent enough to arouse the surveillance system of large numbers of viewers, inducing them to pay close attention to political news. The magnitude of the danger as related in the story, rather than its visual and vocal aspects, appears to be the most important aspect of arousal. It is hoped that experiments that test the arousal potential of combinations of the various elements that have been determined will shed further light on the findings reported. (pages 265 - 290)
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Meaning, Cultural Symbols, and Campaign Strategies - David C. Leege, Kenneth D. Wald
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0012
[emotion, cultural politics, political campaigns, political coalitions, electoral transitions, white evangelical Protestants, white business, professional women, Democratic Party]
This chapter, which argues for emotion's central role in cultural politics, first introduces a theory of cultural politics followed by the dynamics of political campaigns. It then evaluates how emotions are applied to mobilize or demobilize target groups within rival political coalitions. Emotions play a key role in long-term electoral transitions. Modern campaign industries make cultural politics powerful. White evangelical Protestants and white business and professional women have played key roles in the realignment and mobilization of the political parties, and white business and professional women have become a new base of the Democratic Party. The crucial assumption of affective intelligence theory implies that the voter is faced with a binary decision. But voters have a third option, abstention, which they often exercise when faced with unpalatable alternatives. (pages 291 - 315)
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Testing Some Implications of Affective Intelligence Theory at the Aggregate Level - Peter F. Nardulli, James H. Kuklinski
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0013
[electoral politics, political dynamics, individual safety, economic prosperity, physical security, democratic governance, affective intelligence theory, anxiety, anger, fear]
This chapter investigates the electoral politics of the past thirty years to see how political dynamics have been moved by threats to economic prosperity, individual safety, and collective physical security. The conception of democratic governance emphasizes change and dynamics; affective intelligence predicts only that surveillance will occur under high but not low anxiety. The increased anxiety evoked by bad or worsening conditions does not produce irrational, unthinking reactions. The propositions were derived with minimal guidance from affective intelligence theory. Anger decreased estimates of risk and thus promoted support of the war; anxiety worked in the opposite way. Fear is another plausible substitute for anxiety. Adopting fear or anger would work just as effectively as adopting anxiety. Without attention to emotions, political scientists cannot fully understand politics. (pages 316 - 334)
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PART IV. NEXT STEPS IN RESEARCH AND OUTREACH
Politics and the Equilibrium of Fear: Can Strategies and Emotions Interact? - Arthur Lupia, Jesse O. Menning
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0014
[game theory, affective politics, political science, emotion, Sanfey research, fear, game-theoretic approach, strategic behavior]
This chapter reports a global view of affective politics from the perspective of game theory. Many game-theoretic efforts in political science are criticized for the minimal way in which they represent how people think, as well as their psychological inadequacy. Research concerning emotion conducted over the course of the past decade reinforces the idea that emotions are necessary for goal-oriented behavior. In the Sanfey research agenda, the empirical study of emotions and a game-theoretic representation of a social situation combine to provide superior insights into the relation between emotion and strategic behavior. Emotions play a significant role in the outcome of political processes. A game-theoretic approach can clarify the conditions under which politicians should seek to evoke fear among voters and the conditions under which people will respond to emotional appeals. (pages 337 - 356)
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The Affect Effect in the Very Real World of Political Campaigns - Dan Schnur
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0015
[voters, messaging decisions, biographical differences, candidates, hope, political campaigns, fear]
This chapter presents a distinction among political variables that practitioners think about every day but which simply would not occur to academics. A voter's predisposition is as important as the message, and the nature and strength of his or her loyalties make up the critical component in most emotion-based messaging decisions. Biographical differences between candidates can have an enormous effect on the way a message is received by the voters. It is believed that hope is the preferred means of communicating to a campaign's most loyal supporters (the saints) and that fear is the most effective way of discouraging the most virulent opposition (the sinners) from turning out at the polls. The ideological makeup of the academic research community and the impact of those preferences on the practical application of its findings in political campaigns are finally considered. (pages 357 - 374)
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Cognitive Neuroscience and Politics: Next Steps - Ose Mcdermott
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.003.0016
[emotion, politics, political science, media, political messages, cognitive neuroscience, human brain]
This chapter, which introduces some of the larger issues raised by the study of emotion and politics, confirms the significance of incorporating emotion into the study of politics and political science. Challenges exist in the study of emotion and its application to important political considerations. The most reasonable starting point for a model of emotion in politics derives from evolutionary theories of biology and psychology. Media is one very important factor in the real world of politics and emotions. Casting political messages in narrow personal and emotional terms can eradicate the potential for common ground and lead to vehement disagreement. The effect of emotion on politics has widespread and manifest validity. As methods in cognitive neuroscience improve, the understanding of the functioning of the human brain improves in ways that make empirically grounded investigations more plausible and gratifying. (pages 375 - 398)
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References
Contributors
Index
