We propose that political extremists use more negative language than moderates. Previous research found that conservatives report feeling happier than liberals and yet liberals “display greater happiness” in their language than do conservatives. However, some of the previous studies relied on questionable measures of political orientation and affective language, and no studies have examined whether political orientation and affective language are nonlinearly related. Revisiting the same contexts (Twitter, U.S. Congress), and adding three new ones (political organizations, news media, crowdsourced Americans), we found that the language of liberal and conservative extremists was more negative and angry in its emotional tone than that of moderates. Contrary to previous research, we found that liberal extremists’ language was more negative than that of conservative extremists. Additional analyses supported the explanation that extremists feel threatened by the activities of political rivals, and their angry, negative language represents efforts to communicate as much to others.
AltemeyerR. A. (1998). The other “authoritarian personality.” In ZannaM. P. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 30, pp. 47-91). New York, NY: Academic Press.
2.
BarberáP.JostJ. T.NaglerJ.TuckerJ. A.BonneauR. (2015). Tweeting from left to right: Is online political communication more than an echo chamber?Psychological Science, 26, 1531-1542. doi:10.1177/0956797615594620
3.
BerinskyA. J. (2009). In time of war: Understanding American public opinion from World War II to Iraq. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
4.
BradyW. J.WillsJ. A.JostJ. T.TuckerJ. A.Van BavelJ. J. (2017). Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 114, 7313-7318. doi:10.1073/pnas.1618923114
5.
BrandtM. J.EvansA. M.CrawfordJ. T. (2015).The unthinking or confident extremist? Political extremists are more likely than moderates to reject experimenter-generated anchors. Psychological Science, 26, 189-202. doi:10.1177/0956797614559730
6.
BrandtM. J.Van TongerenD. R. (2017). People both high and low on religious fundamentalism are prejudiced toward dissimilar groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112, 76-97.
7.
BrownlowL. (1969). What we expect the president to do. The presidency, (pp. 35-43).
8.
ByrneD. (1969). Attitudes and attraction. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 4, 35-89.
9.
CliffordS.JeritJ.RaineyC.MotylM. (2015).Moral concerns and policy attitudes: Investigating the influence of elite rhetoric. Political Communication, 32, 229-248.
10.
ConwayL. G.GornickL. J.HouckS. C.AndersonC.StockertJ.SessomsD.McCueK. (2016).Are conservatives really more simple-minded than liberals? The domain specificity of complex thinking. Political Psychology, 37, 777-798.
11.
CrawfordJ. T. (2014). Ideological symmetries and asymmetries in political intolerance and prejudice toward political activist groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 55, 284-298.
12.
DuckittJ. (2001). A dual-process cognitive-motivational theory of ideology and prejudice. In ZannaM. P.ZannaM. P. (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 33, pp. 41-113). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
13.
FeinbergM.WillerR. (2015). From gulf to bridge: When do moral arguments facilitate political influence?Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 1665-1681.
14.
FernbachP. M.RogersT.FoxC. R.SlomanS. A. (2013). Political extremism is supported by an illusion of understanding. Psychological Science, 24, 939-946. doi:10.1177/0956797612464058
15.
FrimerJ. A.AquinoK.GebauerJ. E.ZhuL.OakesH. (2015).A decline in prosocial language helps explain public disapproval of the U.S. Congress. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112, 6591-6594. doi:10.1073/pnas.1500355112
16.
FrimerJ. A.GaucherD.SchaeferN. K. (2014). Political conservatives’ affinity for obedience to authority is loyal, not blind. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 1205-1214. doi:10.1177/0146167214538672
17.
HibbingJ. R.SmithK. B.AlfordJ. R. (2014). Differences in negativity bias underlie variations in political ideology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 297-307. doi:10.1017/S0140525X13001192
18.
HongS.KimS. H. (2016). Political polarization on twitter: Implications for the use of social media in digital governments. Government Information Quarterly, 33, 777-782. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2016.04.007
19.
HuddyL.MasonL.AarøeL. (2015). Expressive partisanship: Campaign involvement, political emotion, and partisan identity. American Political Science Review, 109, 1-17.
JostJ. T.GlaserJ.KruglanskiA. W.SullowayF. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339-375. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339
22.
KinderD. R.KalmoeN. P. (2017). Neither liberal nor conservative: Ideological innocence in the American public. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
23.
KramerA. I.GuilloryJ. E.HancockJ. T. (2014). Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111, 8788-8790. doi:10.1073/pnas.1320040111
24.
LakoffG. (2002). Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
25.
LammersJ.KochA.ConwayP.BrandtM. J. (2017). The political domain appears simpler to the politically extreme than to political moderates. Social Psychological & Personality Science, 8, 612-622. doi:10.1177/1948550616678456
26.
LewisJ. B.PooleK. T. (2004). Measuring bias and uncertainty in ideal point estimates via the parametric bootstrap. Political Analysis, 12, 105-127. doi:10.1093/pan/mph015
27.
MasonL. (2018). Ideologues without issues: The polarizing consequences of ideological identities. Public Opinion Quarterly, 82, 280-301.
28.
McAdamsD. P.DiamondA.de St. AubinE.MansfieldE. (1997). Stories of commitment: The psychosocial construction of generative lives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 678-694. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.72.3.678
29.
McCloskyH.ChongD. (1985). Similarities and differences between left-wing and right-wing radicals. British Journal of Political Science, 15, 329-363.
30.
MeindlJ. R.EhrlichS. B.DukerichJ. M. (1985). The romance of leadership. Administrative Science Quarterly, 30, 78-102. doi:10.2307/2392813
31.
MullenE.SkitkaL. J. (2006). Exploring the psychological underpinnings of the moral mandate effect: Motivated reasoning, group differentiation, or anger?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 629-643. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.90.4.629
32.
NapierJ. L.JostJ. T. (2008). Why are conservatives happier than liberals?Psychological Science, 19, 565-572. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02124.x
OnraetE.Van HielA.DhontK. (2013). The relationship between right-wing ideological attitudes and psychological well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 509-522. doi:10.1177/0146167213478199S
35.
PennebakerJ. W.BoothR. J.BoydR. L.FrancisM. E. (2015). Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count: LIWC2015. Austin, TX: Pennebaker Conglomerates. Available from www.liwc.net
PressmanS.D.CohenS. (2012). Positive emotion words and longevity in famous deceased psychologists. Health Psychology, 31, 297-305.
40.
RyanT. J. (2014). Reconsidering moral issues in politics. The Journal of Politics, 76, 380-397. doi:10.1017/S0022381613001357
41.
SchlenkerB. R.ChambersJ. R.LeB. M. (2012). Conservatives are happier than liberals, but why? Political ideology, personality, and life satisfaction. Journal of Research in Personality, 46, 127-146. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2011.12.009
42.
SherifM.HarveyO. J.WhiteB. J.HoodW. R.SherifC. W. (1961). Intergroup conflict and cooperation: The Robbers’ Cave experiment. Norman: Institute of Group Relations, University of Oklahoma.
43.
SmithC. A.EllsworthP. C. (1985).Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 813-838. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.48.4.813
44.
SylwesterK.PurverM. (2015). Twitter language use reflects psychological differences between Democrats and Republicans. PLoS ONE, 10(9), e0137422. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0137422
45.
TetlockP. E. (1984). Cognitive style and political belief systems in the British House of Commons. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 365-375. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.46.2.365
46.
TetlockP. E. (1986). A value pluralism model of ideological reasoning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 819-827. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.50.4.819
47.
TonerK.LearyM. R.AsherM. W.Jongman-SerenoK. P. (2013). Feeling superior is a bipartisan issue: Extremity (not direction) of political views predicts perceived belief superiority. Psychological Science, 24, 2454-2462. doi:10.1177/0956797613494848
48.
TumasjanA.SprengerT. O.SandnerP. G.WelpeI. M. (2011). Election forecasts with Twitter: How 140 characters reflect the political landscape. Social Science Computer Review, 29, 402-418. doi:10.1177/0894439310386557
49.
TuretskyK. M.RiddleT. A. (2018). Porous chambers, echoes of valence and stereotypes. A network analysis of online news coverage interconnectedness following a nationally polarizing race-related event. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 92, 163-175. doi:10.1177/1948550617733519
50.
vanProoijenJ.KrouwelA. M.BoitenM.EendebakL. (2015). Fear among the extremes: How political ideology predicts negative emotions and outgroup derogation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 485-497. doi:10.1177/0146167215569706
WatsonD.ClarkL. A. (1994). The PANAS-X: Manual for the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule–Expanded Form. Ames: Iowa State University.
53.
WatsonD.ClarkL. A.TellegenA. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063-1070. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063
54.
WojcikS. P.HovasapianA.GrahamJ.MotylM.DittoP. H. (2015). Conservatives report, but liberals display, greater happiness. Science, 347, 1243-1246. doi:10.1126/science.1260817
55.
WynnK. (2016). Origins of value conflict: Babies do not agree to disagree. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20, 3-5.
56.
YoungL.SorokaS. (2012). Affective news: The automated coding of sentiment in political texts. Political Communication, 29, 205-231.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
