User:Joahero/Emotions and Voting

1)	A growing literature finds that affective states play a role in public voting behavior. Evidence has shown a significant impact on voting decisions of a variety of events that are irrelevant to the evaluation of candidates, such as the outcome of football matches (Healy), weather, etc. While much of the political science and economics literature has assumed that irrelevant events have trivial significance on political behavior, political scientists have begun to incorporate social psychological theories that challenge this notion. The mechanism that has been posited for this effect is emotion.

2)	Mechanisms of affective influence on voting. Positive emotions help the incumbent or the candidate of the incumbent’s party, negative emotions help the challenger. Several Emotions that have been studied: a.	Surprise – Surprise magnifies the impact of emotion on voting. (Healy) b.	Anger (parker) c.	fear Affective intensity has also been shown to moderate the relationship between affect and voting, with one study finding a doubling of estimated impact for higher-intensity affective shocks. Affective shocks appear to have a diminishing impact on voting behavior as election day draws near. One possible mechanisms for this is the underlying distribution of when voters make up their minds.

3)	Emotional effects of voting: a.	A recent study in Israel showed that the act of voting leads to higher levels of cortisol, the so-called "stress hormone," which has been found to affect memory consolidation, impair memory retrieval and lead to risk-seeking behavior.

4)	Suggested ways to improve decision making in a voting context.

References

Finn, Christopher, and Jack Glaser. 2010. “Voter Affect and the 2008 US Presidential Election: Hope and Race  Mattered.” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 10(1): 262–275.

Gomez, Brad T., Thomas G. Hansford, and George A. Krause. 2007. “The Republicans Should Pray for Rain: Weather, Turnout, and Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections.” Journal of Politics 69(3): 649–663.

Gonzalez-Bailon, Sandra, Rafael E. Banchs, and Andreas Kaltenbrunner. 2012. “Emotions, Public Opinion, and US Presidential Approval Rates: A 5-Year  Analysis of Online Political Discussions.” Human Communication Research 38(2).

Healy, Andrew J., Neil Malhotra, and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo. 2010. “Irrelevant events affect voters’ evaluations of government performance.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107(29): 12804–12809.

Ladd, Jonathan McDonald, and Gabriel S. Lenz. 2011. “Does Anxiety Improve Voters’ Decision Making?” Political Psychology 32(2): 347–361.

Marcus, George E., W. Russell Neuman, and Michael MacKuen. 2000. Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment. University of Chicago Press.

Miller, Patrick R. 2011. “The Emotional Citizen: Emotion as a Function of Political Sophistication.” Political Psychology 32(4): 575–600.

Panagopoulos, Costas. 2010. “Affect, Social Pressure and Prosocial Motivation: Field Experimental  Evidence of the Mobilizing Effects of Pride, Shame and Publicizing   Voting Behavior.” Political Behavior 32(3): 369–386.

Parker, Michael T., and Linda M. Isbell. 2010. “How I Vote Depends on How I Feel: The Differential Impact of Anger and  Fear on Political Information Processing.” Psychological Science 21(4): 548–550.

Valentino, Nicholas A. et al. 2008. “Is a Worried Citizen a Good Citizen? Emotions, Political Information Seeking, and Learning via the Internet.” Political Psychology 29(2): 247–273.

Waismel-Manor, Israel, Gal Ifergane, and Hagit Cohen. 2011. “When endocrinology and democracy collide: Emotions, cortisol and voting  at national elections.” European Neuropsychopharmacology 21(11): 789–795.