{"title":"We love, they hate: Emotions in affective polarization and how partisans may use them","authors":"P. L. Versteegen","doi":"10.1111/pops.12955","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"What emotions do affectively polarized individuals report, and how? While affect is a broad term, research suggests that different emotions predict distinct political behaviors. Therefore, it is vital to understand what emotions partisans report. However, as research on motivated reasoning suggests that people process information consistent with their partisan mind, I argue that they may not necessarily report the emotions they feel. Instead, they may ascribe normatively desirable emotions to their ingroup and normatively undesirable emotions to opposing outgroups. Doing so makes their ingroup distinct from and superior to outgroups. This article develops and showcases this argument. I analyze data in which affective polarization was likely high—interviews with radical‐right voters conducted before a major election—to illustrate what emotions partisans report and how. The discussion invites future research to test how affective polarization correlates with single emotions and whether partisans strengthen polarization by how they talk about emotions.","PeriodicalId":48332,"journal":{"name":"Political Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Political Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12955","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
What emotions do affectively polarized individuals report, and how? While affect is a broad term, research suggests that different emotions predict distinct political behaviors. Therefore, it is vital to understand what emotions partisans report. However, as research on motivated reasoning suggests that people process information consistent with their partisan mind, I argue that they may not necessarily report the emotions they feel. Instead, they may ascribe normatively desirable emotions to their ingroup and normatively undesirable emotions to opposing outgroups. Doing so makes their ingroup distinct from and superior to outgroups. This article develops and showcases this argument. I analyze data in which affective polarization was likely high—interviews with radical‐right voters conducted before a major election—to illustrate what emotions partisans report and how. The discussion invites future research to test how affective polarization correlates with single emotions and whether partisans strengthen polarization by how they talk about emotions.
期刊介绍:
Understanding the psychological aspects of national and international political developments is increasingly important in this age of international tension and sweeping political change. Political Psychology, the journal of the International Society of Political Psychology, is dedicated to the analysis of the interrelationships between psychological and political processes. International contributors draw on a diverse range of sources, including clinical and cognitive psychology, economics, history, international relations, philosophy, political science, political theory, sociology, personality and social psychology.