How many times have you spoken with someone about a political individual or issue only to find that no matter what you say, they just won’t budge an inch? You can talk until your face turns blue but they only dig in more and things start to get heated. . . assuming they weren’t already. Who hasn’t had that experience? The last chapter was about conveying information and informing people which may have led you to think, “Sure, I can plan my very best strategy based on what someone already thinks but what do I do if they’re not thinking at all?” You’re a smart reader. Welcome to chapter 5.
We are not purely rational thinkers when it comes to politics, particularly as partisanship has become more and more a part of our core concept and identity. Chapter 4 was devoted to how people think, both consciously and unconsciously, so we might shift things in a desired direction using information. This chapter is related but significantly different: it’s about how people feel. Emotional reactions are some of the most common obstacles to respectful political discussion and also some of the most complicated. Because political discussion and debate often evoke strong emotions, the connection between emotional language and engaging conversations is vitally important. One way we know this: we have all seen political ads that manipulate emotion and use emotional language to appeal to the public.1 While these ads may be effective in some ways, they also make it all the more difficult to have meaningful discussions with those around us.
In general, we like to think of ourselves as logical people making logical decisions. At the same time, we also say things like Trust your gut! Listen to your intuition! Et cetera. That isn’t necessarily bad advice but perhaps it’s incomplete: the question isn’t whether you should trust your intuition but when you should trust it. That’s where something called dual process theory comes into play. It suggests that when we are making decisions, there are two different systems of thinking, what psychologists call System 1 and System 2.
System 1 is your emotional processor. It’s automatic and unconscious, better known as our intuition or gut feeling: fast, automatic, emotional, and subconscious. System 1 is more accurate in areas where we’ve gathered a lot of data with reliable and fast feedback like social dynamics. For example, intuitively, you know if you call someone a disparaging name, they’ll probably react by getting sad, angry, or defensive. That’s because our intuition has been “trained” by repeatedly witnessing occurrences and receiving fast feedback on the consequences. On the other hand, System 2 is your logical processor. It’s controlled and conscious but much slower, working through different considerations, applying different concepts and models, and weighing them all up. System 2 is easily depleted because it’s slow and requires your full focus. The more time you spend thinking critically throughout the day, the less and less you’ll see System 2 pop up when it’s time to make a decision; however, System 1 is always around.2
Perhaps most important for this chapter, we tend to use these two processes for making decisions about what is moral or ethical behavior, what Jonathan Haidt calls social intuitionism.3 He finds that we make moral judgments predominantly on the basis of intuition. When prompted, we use our System 2 to provide a rationalization but only rarely do people use conscious reasoning beforehand. For important moral and ethical considerations—and, I argue, politics and policy—we sometimes make decisions quickly and emotionally, only coming around to use reason after the fact to justify our initial decision. We rely on intuition, a process that gives us the ability to know something directly and without analytic reasoning, bridging the gap between the conscious and nonconscious parts of our mind, and also between instinct and reason. Not everything with which we need to concern ourselves has to do with information and reason;4 other elements are at play. Namely, emotion and interacting with others molds our positions and judgments, often more than we care to admit. Sound like anyone you know? Maybe yourself? I know I’m often guilty of this behavior.
This chapter delves into what emotions are, how they affect our thought processes, and the emotions most commonly evoked when we discuss American politics and policy. I’ll start with a broad discussion of what emotion is and introduce a few relevant terms and some theory for us to consider. Then I’ll focus in on a few common emotions that you have likely encountered in everyday discussions and propose some ways to counteract or neutralize them to lead to more measured and meaningful discussion. Let’s jump in, shall we?
First, a caveat. This brief review is just that: brief and a review. The study of emotion in social psychology is incredibly robust and diverse and has been for a very long time. In a review article in 1999, an academic search of the word “emotion” turned up 5,064 citations in the previous 5 years.5 Needless to say, there is a lot of research on it and lots of different conceptualizations; there isn’t one conclusive definition of emotion so I’ll offer two. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of emotion is, “A strong feeling deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.”6 Neuroscientist Dr. Joseph LeDoux defines emotions as “the result of a cognitive and conscious process which occurs in response to a body system response to a trigger,”7 and they are often seen as responses to significant internal and external events.8 The key is that emotions are feelings that are triggered by events, both internal and external.
Briefly, there are three components to how the brain shapes how we feel. The first component is known as the behavioral response and is the most straightforward: how we express emotion. This is, quite simply, how we make sense of emotional expression around us and how we react to it, what some consider “emotional intelligence.” It involves interpreting the emotional expressions around us, including body language, reading someone’s face for a smile, or a frown to signal sadness, and so on. Some of these expressions are universal; others are dependent on sociocultural norms in shaping how we interpret and express emotions. People from Western cultures like the United States express negative emotions when alone but they are also likely to express them in the presence of others, including people of authority; people from Eastern cultures are more likely to express negative emotions only when they are alone. For example, in Japan, people tend to stifle strong emotions like fear or disgust when a person in a position of authority is present.
Relatedly, there is a subjective component to how emotions are perceived and felt. While there are some elements of basic, universal emotions that are experienced by people regardless of culture or background, researchers believe how emotions are experienced can be highly subjective. For example, while we may have broad labels for emotions like “angry,” “sad,” or “happy,” we have surely experienced them in ways that show they are multidimensional and thus subjective. Consider anger as an example. When you have felt angry, has it always been in the exact same way? When you’re running late to a meeting and the person driving in front of you is driving 15 miles per hour in a 40 mile-per-hour zone, you might be mildly angry and annoyed; when you have been lied to by a close friend or family member about something really important, you might be very angry and hurt. We don’t always experience pure forms of each emotion; it’s common to have mixed experiences, with different components of emotion in different events and situations. When starting a new job, you may be excited and nervous; when preparing to welcome a child into the world, you might be anxious, happy, scared, and nervous. And these combinations of emotions can occur simultaneously or you can feel them one after another. The larger point is, there is a degree of subjectivity that needs to be considered when conceptualizing emotions and their effects.
The final component to how we experience emotion is the physiological response. If your heart has ever felt like it was going to beat out of your chest because you were afraid or if you’ve felt your stomach turn because you were anxious, then you know about the ways your body can physically respond to emotion. The sympathetic nervous system, a branch of the autonomic nervous system that controls involuntary body responses, controls the body’s fight-or-flight reactions. When facing a threat, this system automatically prepares your body either to address a perceived threat or to flee from danger. Recent study of emotion has looked at the physiological role of emotion, for example, by looking at the amygdala, a tiny, almond-shaped part of your brain linked to hunger, thirst, emotion, and memory. Researchers have used brain imaging to show that when people are shown threatening images, the amygdala becomes activated.
By now, you get it: the interplay between emotion and physicality is complicated. So how do we make sense of emotion at all? It doesn’t necessarily get clearer: Social psychologists also differ on how they think emotion is structured and the debate is incredibly complex and, frankly, outside the scope of what we need to discuss here.9 There are a few concepts we’ll discuss later but for now let’s focus on the big picture. On the one hand, some contemporary studies of attitudes suggest that emotion can be conceived as falling along a single dimension ranging from negative to positive—also known as valence—with intensity increasing as one moves away from the center toward the poles. This view emphasizes an evaluative component of social judgment10 and is a reasonable approximation of the ways in which many people divide the world into “likes and dislikes.”11 Others contend that such a focus on valence and summative judgments is likely to discount the role of specific emotions: if we only view emotions from the perspective of negative vs. positive, reactions to politics like fear, disgust, and disappointment would typically all fall under the same category.
However, common sense dictates that these emotions not only are very different from each other but also are likely to lead to different attitudes and behaviors in the political domain. The same is, of course, true for positive emotions; research suggests that emotions like enthusiasm, sympathy, and serenity are similar in that they’re all positive but they reflect much more than a simple “like.”12 To capture the whole picture of how emotion affects our thinking, we should consider the impact of individual, discrete emotions to best understand their effects and how they could be mitigated.
In addition to defining what emotions are, researchers identify and classify types of emotions in different ways over time. For example, in the 1970s, psychologist Paul Ekman suggested that there are six basic emotions that are universal throughout human cultures: fear, disgust, anger, surprise, happiness, and sadness.13 In 1999, he expanded this list to include a number of other basic emotions, including embarrassment, excitement, contempt, shame, pride, satisfaction, and amusement.14 Others have categorized emotions including or excluding certain ones, with different justifications for each, and we could discuss them ad nauseum if we wanted.
For our purposes, I think one of the easiest and most comprehensive models comes from Robert Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary theory of emotion which he presented as the “wheel of emotions.”15
Take a look at Figure 5.1. (Please see insert for color version.) Plutchik focused on eight primary emotional dimensions: joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, anticipation, anger, and disgust. Every primary emotion has a polar opposite as well: joy is the opposite of sadness; fear is the opposite of anger; anticipation is the opposite of surprise; and disgust is the opposite of trust. Relying on an evolutionary perspective that includes fight-or-flight instincts and the desire to reproduce, the theory aims to explain psychological defense mechanisms, with eight defense mechanisms proposed to be manifestations of the eight core emotions. Plutchik argues these emotions trigger behaviors that increase the likelihood of survival and they apply to humans as well as other species.
Figure 5.1 Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions
Source: Reprinted with permission from American Scientist. Figure 6 from Plutchik, Robert. 2001. “The Nature of Emotions: Human Emotions Have Deep Evolutionary Roots, a Fact That May Explain Their Complexity and Provide Tools for Clinical Practice.” American Scientist, Vol. 89, No. 4, p. 349, Figure 6.
Again, emotions are related in an interconnected way, with each able to be expressed at different intensities and in different combinations to form different emotions, much as an artist mixes primary colors to create other colors. For example, love is defined as adding together joy and trust. The intensity of emotion decreases as you move outward and increases as you move toward the wheel’s center. The darker the color, the more intense the emotion. For example, at its most intense, anger becomes rage; one level down, anger becomes annoyance. The highest expression in another portion of the wheel is ecstasy followed by joy and serenity moving down the scale of intensity.
To be fair, you may not experience emotions in precisely this fashion: emotions often don’t play out in such tidy and symmetrical ways. Plutchik’s framework is still useful, however, for thinking about practical approaches to having political conversations. One of the reasons the Plutchik wheel of emotion is so helpful is that it gives us a visual representation of how emotions interact with each other. Perhaps most importantly, the wheel gives us a roadmap of what to do: finding the right antidote to any particular emotion can help to either diminish or soften its effect. The first step in determining how to counteract emotion in terms of responses to political discussions is understanding which emotions are most likely to be evoked and what effects those emotions can have. From there, we can discuss different strategies and tactics to offset the effects and (hopefully) move the needle in the other direction or, at the very least, to keep things calm and respectful. First, I will discuss the most common negative emotions associated with political discussion: anger, fear and anxiety, and disgust. Along with each description, I’ll introduce specific examples of how to disarm them using Plutchik’s wheel of emotions.
When I think about how people feel toward contemporary American politics, the first emotion that comes to mind is anger—from all ideologies and partisan identities—so it makes sense that it’s the first emotion we address. We all know what anger is but to make it official: the American Psychological Association defines anger as “an emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong.”16 It’s a negatively valenced emotion triggered when a person’s goals are blocked, when they feel slighted, or when they perceive that an injustice or violation of standards has occurred. It is often strongly associated with a desire for certainty and control. An angry person will try, urgently and sometimes by punishing others or causing harm, to initiate corrective action to gain the certainty and control that person is currently missing.17 Research finds links between anger and aggression, targeted blaming, and antisocial behaviors.18 Studies show that anger appeals are more often used in political rhetoric following a terrorist attack and that angry citizens are less likely to demonstrate tolerance in the wake of a crisis.19
Anger is associated with the content of cognition; it literally changes the way we think. In the political arena, anger has been shown to drive attitudes toward punitive policies and risky policies20 and to induce people to be less likely to act altruistically.21 Perhaps most importantly for our purposes, anger often includes haphazard information processing. Consistent with the chapter on biased information processing, research shows that people respond to angry emotions in a variety of ways that aren’t great for political discussions. For example, people are less willing to compromise (politically) and less likely to learn from new information; more likely to become defensive in conversations; more likely to dismiss attitudinally challenging information; more likely to seek information that reinforces an existing position (and to feel more resolute in those priors); and/or to rely more heavily on prior dispositions in their political evaluations.22 As a result, anger leads to evaluations that are based more heavily on existing dispositions such as partisanship as well as (biased) ideological information—and that reliance on biased information even leads to angry citizens being less likely to correctly recall the policy stances of their most preferred political candidate.23
Referring back to Figure 5.1, there isn’t a logical place to go with anger in terms of combining it with another emotion—at least when it comes to creating positive outcomes in political conversations. Anger and anticipation lead to aggressiveness; anger and disgust lead to contempt. To put it mildly, neither of those is going to help us out. Anger is known to trigger our innate fight-or-flight response, preparing the body for survival and bypassing our logical, conscious thought processes.24 Given the deep anatomical and physiological changes that we undergo when we’re truly angry, the best option available is doing whatever you can to just turn it down. Psychologists and psychiatrists recommend an approach that reduces frustration and de-escalates an angry situation. For example, infusing humor into a situation can be really helpful. More on that a little later in this chapter.
Without taking too deep of a dive on this one, it is important to consider these steps because you will encounter anger— if you haven’t already—when talking with others about politics. Letting an angry person vent while showing them you are sincerely listening to them goes a long way. Empathic statements help an angry person dial back their anger and make the target of their anger seem less threatening, which in turn reduces the impact of the angry person’s fight-or-flight response. Once angry people vent their frustrations, they become more open to solutions because they think more clearly when they are not angry. After they’ve been heard (for a reasonable amount of time), invite their views on a solution. Once it’s clear their anger is mostly gone, reframing the discussion to focus on how to make things better can diffuse tensions further.
The reason this approach works is that when you “lean into” someone’s anger rather than take issue with it, that person will likely feel less alone and simply feeling less alone can produce a calming effect. While that doesn’t always lead to political persuasion, it does lead to a person being in a place where they might be capable of listening. You haven’t lost your cool; you haven’t diminished your passion for the topic at hand or backed down from your beliefs. If nothing else, it helps your credibility and maybe will help set you up well for next time and hey, that’s not nothing either.
Fear is a common emotion when it comes to encountering difference, particularly in the realm of divergent political ideas and people we perceive to be members of demographic and social outgroups. Fear is a well-researched construct in psychology and related fields, particularly in regard to its effect on the ways we think and the ways we behave. For example, researchers have found that a state of fear increases an impressive array of effects, including heightened situational awareness; increased information recall; avoidance behaviors like withdrawal; and, in what seems a little surprising, higher levels of political tolerance when political values are affirmed.25 Other work finds that fearful individuals tended to be more pessimistic and worry about common causes of death. On a more positive note, psychologists have also found that fear drives people to engage in more systematic and deliberative thought processes as well.26
Anxiety and fear are often used interchangeably but they are, in fact, slightly different.27 Anxiety is a reaction to the perception of a threat, particularly when a threat is uncertain, directed toward a person’s well-being, and/or is outside of a person’s control. Anxiety is traditionally seen as oriented toward generalized and unknown danger while fear is related to a more immediate, proximate threat that is more likely to lead to a fight-or-flight response.28 Anxiety isn’t included in Plutchik’s wheel of emotions which is why I discuss it under the topic of fear rather than giving it its own section but in many ways, anxiety is a more productive focus than fear: when talking about situations characterized by uncertainty—situations that occur often in the political communication arena—researchers find that anxiety is often the emotion elicited.29 For example, anxiety has been found to decrease what’s known as self-efficacy, an individual’s belief that they can achieve goals.30 In political terms, self-efficacy is usually thought of as political efficacy, referring to citizens’ faith and trust in government as well as the belief that “someone like them” can understand and influence something in politics.
There are a few caveats, as you might expect. Research does suggest that there is a tendency for anxiety to steer people to certain kinds of information when they are seeking reassurance. For example, when there is a lot of information available such as during a presidential election, anxiety makes people more likely to pay attention to news about a preferred candidate.31 For example, during the 2016 election, anxious voters were likely motivated to seek news that suggested their candidate was winning.32,33 Similarly, campaign ads that induce anxiety and are overwhelmingly negative do motivate people to be engaged in politics but often that effect is limited to people who already have high levels of civic competence.34 Anxiety can also interfere with memory35 and correlates with poor information process and recall of information.36 Moreover, while anxiety is associated with cheap participation requiring little effort, anxiety is not associated with more serious forms of political participation like volunteering or donating money.37
OK, so anxiety isn’t completely ideal for political discussion. However, anxiety isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it comes to political engagement and communication either. Anxiety is particularly effective in political talk because it can facilitate persuasion38 and can make political framing even more influential.39 Anxious citizens are likely to redirect their attention to a political threat and are more likely to shed their partisan habits and to increase their political learning. Specifically, voters who felt anxious about their preferred party’s candidate were more likely to reassess their vote choice and to pay more attention to policy positions and candidate characteristics; further, they were more likely to express an intention to vote against their party’s candidate compared to those who did not feel anxious.40 Anxiety often serves an important function in the political arena, guiding the public’s attention to important issues, and it can increase interest in learning more.
Regardless of all of the negative stuff, research does tell us that despite anxiety leading to people being more likely to consume news that supports existing beliefs, it does not necessarily impede information that does not support existing beliefs.41 Appeals to fear and anxiety motivate a search for information, decrease the salience of prior beliefs, and encourage reconsideration of previous thinking.42 Information seeking as a result of anxiety might be more balanced than some might think. In particular, anxious individuals have been found to be more likely to seek out information online compared to people who are angry; what’s more, they then truly used that information, reporting that they are more likely to vote for a political candidate who is closest to them in terms of what they want out of political issues and policies.43 It turns out anxiety isn’t all bad.
When you get the sense that a person is resisting you in a respectful political conversation because of fear or anxiety, remember this nugget from the wheel of emotion: if you can neutralize fear (and logically, anxiety) with trust, it can lead to submission, a momentary yielding to someone else’s authority. Remember that anxiety and uncertainty can produce interest in more information, so when you encounter a person who feels anxious about a political issue, provide them with information to lessen that uncertainty and discomfort. Using the thought process elucidated in chapter 4, be prepared and help facilitate learning the best way you can. If someone is afraid or anxious about immigration and border security, for example, anticipate that emotion and have some news sources at the ready for them to consider (again, using reputable sources they are likely to accept). Use their desire to rid themselves of the uncomfortable fear to your advantage by imbuing some trust into the situation, both interpersonally and with targeted information. Again, Plutchik’s wheel suggests that that might lead to submission, a pretty successful neutralization of fear and anxiety when talking about sometimes contentious or thorny political issues.
On a broad level, disgust sends signals about things that are harmful or toxic, with a foundation in evolutionary psychology: we have an innate desire to maintain purity, safety, and cleanliness.44 Disgust operates as a part of a behavioral immune response to protect us from pathogens and disease; objects that have been shown to elicit disgust include body excretions and fluids; spoiled food; blood and gore; and rodents, insects, and animals associated with the spread of disease. 45 In the political world, disgust draws social distinctions between groups and activities seen as outside the limits of acceptability: research has provided strong connections between disgust sensitivity and traditionalism and/or political conservatism.46
Disgust has become more prevalent in recent political communication, particularly because it has been used to demonize social outgroups and to make people feel more harshly toward those they perceive as different. In particular, the strategic use of disgust can increase negative emotion toward some groups, lowering support for policies that benefit those groups. When people are driven to think about something disgusting— say, asking people to imagine touching each of the following items and then showing them photos of feces, a skin rash, or a dirty toilet—they become more prejudiced toward a variety of social groups. That prejudice is typically aimed at groups who are already marginalized or undervalued like those who are obese, mentally ill, homeless, have physical disabilities, or identify as LGBT—regardless of whether members of those groups are in any way connected to the disgusting item. 47
One particularly interesting study experimentally manipulated the smell in a room to induce disgust. The researchers found that the disgusting odor led to more negative evaluations of gay men and lesbians compared to the group with no smell. It did not, however, lead to more negative evaluations overall (e.g., there was no change in participants’ evaluations of other groups like African Americans or the elderly or on specific political issues).48 These studies are a part of a growing body of research on the role of disgust in moral and social judgment, particularly in regard to homosexuality.49 When people feel disgusted, they are more likely to evaluate the moral actions of other people more harshly in terms of individuals, the larger social groups, and their behavior.50
Some research shows this disgust phenomenon is even powerful enough to transcend partisan cues that would otherwise drive political thinking.51 Taking advantage of this phenomenon, political elites frequently tie marginalized groups to things they know to be disgusting to their audience. For example, Ben Carson, now Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, made explicit ties between homosexuality, pedophilia, and bestiality in a 2013 speech, saying, “Marriage [is] a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality—it doesn’t matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition.”52
As previously mentioned, many social groups in the United States have been portrayed as threatening the polity: most recently, rhetoric toward Islamic people and immigrants has cast them not only in a threatening way but in many ways as “disgusting” people who directly threaten the health of the United States. Another example is LGBT people. Research shows that stigma toward LGBT people is often driven by disgust toward them, exacerbated by the fact that political rhetoric has historically described them as sexually deviant or harmful.53 For example, Anita Bryant, a prominent anti-gay activist in the 1970s, proclaimed, “if [children] are exposed to homosexuality, I might as well feed them garbage.”54 In 2014, Pat Robertson commented, “Nobody can ever produce a child through homosexual sex or lesbian sex—you cannot do it. This is for procreation and God has said that those who violate it, the land will vomit them out.”55 Robertson in particular shows that reliance on disgust rhetoric is not a thing of the past; it continues to be a tool used to stigmatize LGBT people in contemporary politics. Elites often rely on disgusting rhetoric and imagery with the goal of shaping public opinion and policy; however, disgust can have effects that are different than what they may anticipate.56
Put bluntly, disgust is a difficult challenge. If it leads to avoidance and lower levels of information processing, what is there to do when someone with whom you’re trying to speak feels disgust toward the topic? Put into a public health standpoint, one of the most effective ways to counteract the spread of a disease is to convey information about its symptoms and transmission but how might that work if that information itself is seen as disgusting? This was part of the challenge for HIV/AIDS advocates in the early part of the epidemic. The public’s willingness to learn about the disease was limited because of feelings of disgust toward common methods of transmission (sex, including anal intercourse; IV drug use; blood transfusions) as well as the most common profile of those living with the disease (gay men, men who have sex with men).
Aside from infectious disease, disgust presents challenges when it comes to interacting with divergent ideas and/or stigmatized social groups, particularly when an association between those groups and infectious disease already exists. For example, research has shown that disgust is a common reaction to outgroups that are perceived as a pathogen threat, including LGBT people, immigrants, racial and ethnic outgroups, and homeless people.57 When those connections already exist in the minds of some people, counteracting prejudice and intolerance becomes more difficult; the two most common ways to address such intolerance—asking people to take the perspective of an out-group and providing important contextual information about an out-group—become less effective.58
In some ways, disgust and anxiety have opposite effects: While anxiety tends to lead people to seek out information as a way to cope with a perceived threat, disgust increases avoidance and induces people to be less attentive to new information.59 That makes sense because the biological function of disgust is to protect us from harm or disease so we’re more likely to avoid things and distance ourselves from people and situations that are perceived as different or outside the mainstream.
There are two strategies to combat disgust that I think are helpful. First, recall from Figure 5.1, the combination of different emotions can lead to a third one. In this instance, you can try to combine disgust with sadness which can result in remorse. Shifting to a strategy of humanizing can, in some instances, shift disgust into pathos and/or sadness. For example, highlighting the human tragedies, heartbreak, and struggle behind the HIV/AIDS crisis can reorient thinking away from methods of transmission (which may evoke disgust) to heartbreaking stories of loved ones being lost and the fact that real people suffered and are suffering. This framing might elicit shame (and remorse for feeling disgusted) and shifting the conversion from disgust to remorse can, under some circumstances, be helpful. Use your discretion, however, because making people feel shameful can have other, non-helpful side effects.
The second strategy is to “downgrade” the emotion of disgust to the next lowest tier, something less intense: boredom. Think of boredom in this context as viewing the situation as mundane or “run-of-the-mill,” not with disinterest. Given that there is a tendency to attend less to new information, providing complex, thought-intensive new data about why someone being disgusted is wrong won’t have a huge impact. The best-case scenario is transitioning someone away from feeling threatened and into a position where they think the threat isn’t relevant or applicable to them. One can highlight the hyperbole and ridiculousness of elite statements trying to tie a specific issue to something typically seen as disgusting and then shift to something more pleasant and personal. “No, Ben Carson, it is absurd to equate homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia. They have nothing to do with each other. By the way, I just spoke to my (LGBT) friend who just had a baby. She and her wife are so excited!” “My (LGBT) coworker just got a cool new job at a new company.” You get the idea. The best strategy is to bluntly and directly dissociate the emotion (disgust) with the targeted group or concept and then to create a newer, more positive and personal connection. Again, disgust is tricky and this strategy may not work in every situation but with persistent reframing and explicit attempts at reconnection, it is at least possible to shift a disgusting affect toward something more benign or at least more boring. Persistence, persistence, persistence.
We’ve seen where conversations about politics and policy typically go when negative emotions are involved. In this section, we look at three positive emotional strategies—humor, hope, and moral elevation—that can be helpful. We might call these strategies emotional persuasion. Emotional persuasion comes in two forms: emotional storytelling and emotion words. Studies have shown that our brains are engaged by storytelling in a compelling way. For example, Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, published a study that concluded, based on an analysis of fMRI images, that there was considerable overlap between the brain networks used to understand stories and those used to navigate interactions with others, especially interactions where we are trying to discern the feelings and thoughts of other people. Scientists have called the ability and capacity of our brains to create maps of other people’s intentions the “theory of mind.”60 Listening to or reading narratives about the experiences of others builds our capacity to understand those around us. You can use storytelling in any number of ways: you can tell a story about how you personally held a belief that you now know to be invalid. You can tell the story of someone you know who changed their mind about something and never looked back. Or you can help the other person imagine a time when they felt a certain way, all toward the end of bringing them closer to where you are or where you’d like them to be.
There are many emotions you can encounter so it’s helpful to focus on where the conversation is beginning and where you anticipate it ending. Where precisely are you trying to go? Valence and arousal are two important considerations that aren’t explicit in the wheel of emotions but can help us develop communication strategies to help address the specific concerns of the emotions you encounter. They are two core psychological factors that are often confused and thought of as the same but alas, they are not! First, valence is whether the emotion is positive (high) or negative (low). Looking at the wheel in Figure 5.1, it is relatively easy to discern which are which. Second, related to whether an emotion is closer to or farther from the center, arousal is whether the emotion is active (high) or inactive (low). Combining the two is helpful for better understanding a person’s orientation toward the conversation.
Closely related is the content: some words are inherently more emotional than others so the specific words you select carry a lot of meaning. When it comes to evaluating a person’s state of mind (and crafting your response to it), consider where they may be in terms of the emotion words they use. Then choose words that lead them toward a more positive valence and the most appropriate state of arousal or engagement which differs based on your goal. I’m not arguing that a single word is going to be the panacea that changes a person’s emotions; it’s just that some words are more likely to trigger emotions that might be beneficial to what you’re trying to accomplish. Table 5.1 lists a few emotion words in each quadrant and they’re just examples: there are many more where these came from.
Table 5.1 Emotion Words by Valence and Arousal
| Active (high arousal) | Inactive (low arousal) | |
| Positive valence | Bold, brave, eager, daring, dynamic, “in the zone” | Serene, uplifted, unburdened, light, meditative, centered |
| Negative valence | Anxious, afraid, negative, alarmed, defiant | Paralyzed, insecure, disempowered, trapped, vulnerable |
It probably goes without saying but generally, negatively valenced words aren’t the most productive in interpersonal political conversations. As a general rule, you want to steer away from people using these words and feeling these things. There are instances where you want people to feel insecure and alarmed (negative valence, high arousal): political campaigns and some charity ads will use a negative-valence, high-arousal strategy to induce people into action. Negative valence, low arousal is essentially inert and disenchanted; people in this state tend to seek immediate gratification rather than long-term reward, even if that’s the more logical choice. That makes sense because we want to get back to a happier state as soon as possible. There are probably times when that is the best course of action but I’ll leave that to your discretion. Generally speaking, you want to stick to positively valenced words and emotions when you’re interacting with someone on an interpersonal level about politics and policy.
Let’s start with positive valence, low arousal. This quadrant is focused on concepts and emotion words like uplifted, unburdened, and light. As long as it’s not inappropriate given the specific topic or scenario, strategic humor can be a great way to create an atmosphere conducive to productive political conversations.61 Most obviously, laughing makes us happy. Humor is often unexpected and it’s especially unusual now given the state of political discourse. The element of surprise can work to your advantage; humor distracts the brain from the fact that it’s being “sold to” and eases stress and tension, both interpersonally and cognitively.62 As mentioned earlier, humor is a particularly effective tactic to counteract anger or aggression. An interesting analysis into counteracting transphobia conducted by Dr. Nicole Morse examined how humor can reduce bias against transgender people. She looked at the actions taken by Laverne Cox in a 2008 reality TV show.63 Morse suggested that Cox was trying to teach the audience to laugh in response to inappropriate insult, aggression, or absurdity. Using humor as a social corrective—in this case, positioning anti-transgender aggression as a mistake that needs to be changed—can be a powerful yet subtle strategy in emotional storytelling.
Another approach to positive-valence, low-arousal emotional states, trending more toward words like serenity, meditative, and centered, is exemplified by something called moral elevation. It is the state that people sometimes feel after they see or hear about a virtuous act in which someone showed uncommon compassion, forgiveness, and/or altruism. Studies show that in response to such uplifting experiences, people tend to become more helpful, warmer toward others, more optimistic about humanity, and more likely to feel the desire to become a better person.64 The relatively simple idea of showing others good and selfless acts in the world can be a powerful emotional story that changes not only their attitudes and behaviors but their self-image as well.
Moral elevation may also fall into the last category: positive valence and high arousal. These stories can captivate an audience and inspire or encourage. As the emotion words suggest, this strategy inspires happiness and positivity but also boldness, transformation, and dynamism. A common path in this category is an appeal to hope, enthusiasm, or in the words of Plutchik in Figure 5.1, optimism. Optimism is the combination of anticipation and joy, interest and serenity. When people feel they have no control or ability to change, they feel uncertain and out of control. Hope defines both a sense of agency and a path forward to an improved future.65 Researchers have found hope to be associated with anxiety toward political opponents (which is not what we’re going for, exactly) but as we know, anxiety can often increase searches for information and the meaningful consumption of important political events.66 The transformative power of optimism and hope can be recognized in the “hope and change” rhetoric of the Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and in Ronald Reagan’s classic “Morning in America” television advertisement from 1984. Focusing on words and stories that combine happiness and motivation can lay the groundwork for meaningful dialogue and interaction when it comes to political communication.
This chapter has reviewed the vast research on emotion in politics and made suggestions about how to use it to your advantage when possible. It started with some basics: what emotion is, what it isn’t, and a framework of common emotions in political discussion. It certainly isn’t meant to be a comprehensive discussion on emotion; that would take hundreds (thousands?) of books. What it does do, however, is orient your thinking about how emotion can affect political discussions and make a few suggestions to try to shift affect and emotion away from those with a negative valence toward those with a more positive one, hopefully making discussion a bit easier and more productive. Plan when you can: if you can anticipate how someone is going to react, you will have time to craft a strategy to shift their emotion to a more productive place—or ideally, to set the stage with the right valence and level of arousal so that you can start the conversation off on the right foot. If you don’t have the benefit of prior planning, negotiating and navigating others’ emotions about American politics can be tricky and, frankly, exhausting. The key throughout is to keep your head, even when someone else might be losing theirs. Rational thought isn’t always an option; we operate on another level when certain emotions are involved. Do your best, read the situation, and respond in the most productive way. You’ll win some and you’ll lose some but you will win more and lose fewer by keeping these strategies in mind.