Recent U.S. history provides vivid illustrations of the importance of politicians' emotional displays in subsequent judgments of them. Yet, a review of empirical research on the role of affect (emotion, mood, and evaluation) in electoral politics reveals little work that has focused on the impact of candidates' emotional expression on voters' preferences for them. A theoretical framework is proposed to identify psychological mechanisms by which a target's displays of emotion influence judgments of that target. Findings from the emerging literature on emotions and politics challenge the traditional assumption of political science that voters make decisions based solely on the cold consideration of nonaffectively charged information. The affect and politics literature, although somewhat unfocused and broad, represents an interdisciplinary domain of study that contributes to the understanding of both electoral politics and social interaction more generally.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abelson, R. P., Kinder, D. R., Peters, M. D., & Fiske, S. T. (1982). Affective and semantic components in political person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 619-630.
2.
Alexander, F. (1959). Emotional factors in voting behavior. In E. Burdick & A. Brodbeck (Eds.), American voting behavior (pp. 300-307). New York: Free Press.
3.
Alloy, L. B., & Abramson, L. Y. (1979). Judgment of contingency in depressed and nondepressed students: Sadder but wiser?Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108, 441-485.
4.
Anderson, E., & Granberg, D. (1991). Types of affective evaluators in recent U.S. presidential elections. Polity, 24, 147-155.
5.
Bless, H., Bohner, G., Schwarz, N., & Strack, F. (1990). Mood and persuasion: A cognitive response analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 16, 331-345.
6.
Bodenhausen, G. V., Sheppard, L. A., & Kramer, G. P. (1994). Negative affect and social judgment: The differential impact of anger and sadness. European Journal of Social Psychology, 24, 45-62.
7.
Bornstein, R. F., Leone, D. R., & Galley, D. J. (1987). The generalizability of subliminal mere exposure effects: Influence of stimuli perceived without awareness on social behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1070-1079.
8.
Bower, G. H. (1981). Mood and memory. American Psychologist, 36, 129-148.
9.
Carretta, T. R., & Moreland, R. L. (1982). Nixon and Watergate: A field demonstration of belief perseverance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 8, 446-453.
10.
Chaiken, S. (1980). Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source versus message cues in persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 752-766.
11.
Chaiken, S., Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (1996). Principles of persuasion. In E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 702-742). New York: Guilford.
12.
Christ, W. G. (1985). Voter preference and emotion: Using emotional response to classify decided and undecided voters. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 15, 237-254.
13.
Clark, M. S., & Williamson, G. M. (1989). Moods and social judgments. In H. L. Wagner & A. S. R. Manstead (Eds.), Handbook of social psychophysiology (pp. 347-370). Chichester, England: Wiley.
14.
Clore, G. L. (1992). Cognitive phenomenology: Feelings and the construction of judgment. In L. L. Martin & A. Tesser (Eds.), The construction of social judgments (pp. 133-163). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
15.
Condry, J., & Condry, S. (1976). Sex differences: A study of the eye of the beholder. Child Development, 47, 812-819.
16.
Conover, P., & Feldman, S. (1986). Emotional reactions to the economy: I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. American Journal of Political Science, 30, 50-78.
17.
Crites, S. L., Fabrigar, L. R., & Petty, R. E. (1994). Measuring the affective and cognitive properties of attitudes: Conceptual and methodological issues. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 619-634.
18.
Dalto, C. A., Ossoff, E. P., & Pollack, R. D. (1994). Processes underlying reactions to a campaign speech: Cognition, affect, and voter concern. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 9, 701-713.
19.
Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper & Row.
20.
Eisenberg-Berg, N., & Mussen, P. (1980). Personality correlates of sociopolitical liberalism and conservatism in adolescents. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 137, 165-177.
21.
Ekman, P. (1973). Cross-cultural studies of facial expression. In P. Ekman (Ed.), Darwin and facial expression: A century of research in review (pp. 169-222). New York: Academic.
22.
Ekman, P. (1984). Expression and the nature of emotion. In K. R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotion (pp. 319-343). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
23.
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1969). The repertoire of nonverbal behavior: Categories, origins, usage, and coding. Semiotica, 1, 49-98.
24.
Ekman, P., Friesen, W. V., O'Sullivan, M., & Scherer, K. (1980). Relative importance of face, body, and speech in judgments of personality and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 270-277.
25.
Fabes, R. A., & Martin, C. L. (1991). Gender and age stereotypes of emotionality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17, 532-540.
26.
Forgas, J. P. (1991). Affect and social judgment: An introductory review. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Emotion and social judgments (pp. 3-29). Oxford, England: Pergamon.
27.
Forgas, J. P. (1995). Mood and judgment: The affect infusion model (AIM). Psychological Bulletin, 117, 39-66.
28.
Granberg, D., & Brown, T. A. (1989). On affect and cognition in politics. Social Psychology Quarterly, 52, 171-182.
29.
Green, D. P., & Shapiro, I. (1994). Pathologies of rational choice theory: A critique of applications in political science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
30.
Halberstadt, J. B., & Niedenthal, P. M. (1997). Emotional state and the use of stimulus dimensions in judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1017-1033.
31.
Hartmann, G. W. (1936). A field experiment on the comparative effectiveness of “emotional” and “rational” political leaflets in determining election results. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 31, 99-114.
32.
Hastorf, A., & Cantril, H. (1954). They saw a game: A case study. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49, 129-134.
33.
Isen, A. M., Daubman, K. A., & Nowicki, G. P. (1987). Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 1122-1131.
34.
Isen, A. M., & Means, B. (1983). The influence of positive affect on decision-making strategy. Social Cognition, 2, 18-31.
35.
Iyengar, S. (1990). Shortcuts to political knowledge: The role of selective attention and accessibility. In J. Ferejohn & J. Kuklinski (Eds.), Information and democratic processes (pp. 160-185). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
36.
Iyengar, S., Kinder, D. R., Peters, M. D., & Krosnick, J. A. (1984). The evening news and presidential evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 778-787.
37.
Jones, L. E., & Iacobucci, D. (1989). The structure of affect and trait judgments of political figures. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 24,.457-476.
38.
Kinder, D. R., & Sears, D. O. (1985). Public opinion and political action. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (Vol. 2, 3rd ed., pp. 659-741). New York: Random House.
39.
Kinder, D. R. (1994). Reason and emotion in American political life. In R. C. Schank & E. Langer (Eds.), Beliefs, reasoning, and decision making: Psycho-logic in honor of Bob Abelson (pp. 277-314). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
40.
Krauss, R. M., Apple, W., Morency, N., Wenzel, C., & Winton, W. (1981). Verbal, vocal, and visible factors in judgments of another's affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 312-320.
41.
Krosnick, J. A., Betz, A. L., Jussim, L. J., & Lynn, A. R. (1992). Subliminal conditioning of attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 152-162.
42.
Kuklinski, J. H., Riggle, E., Ottati, V., Schwarz, N., & Wyer, R. S., Jr. (1991). The cognitive and affective bases of political tolerance judgments. American Journal of Political Science, 35, 1-27.
43.
Labott, S. M., Martin, R. B., Eason, P. S., & Berkey, E. Y. (1991). Social reactions to the expression of emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 5, 397-417.
44.
LaFrance, M., & Banaji, M. R. (1992). Toward a reconsideration of the gender-emotion relationship. In M. S. Clark (Ed.), Emotion and social behavior (pp. 178-201). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
45.
LaFrance, M., & Hecht, M. A. (1995). Why smiles generate leniency. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 207-214.
46.
Lau, R. R., Sears, D. O., & Centers, R. (1979). The “positivity bias” in evaluations of public figures: Evidence against instrument artifacts. Public Opinion Quarterly, 43, 347-358.
47.
Lazarus, R. S. (1984). Thoughts on the relations between emotion and cognition. In K. R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotion (pp. 247-257). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
48.
Lazarus, R. S., Coyne, J. C., & Folkman, S. (1984). Cognition, emotion and motivation: The doctoring of humpty-dumpty. In K. R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotion (pp. 221-237). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
49.
LeDoux, J. E. (1989). Cognitive-emotional interactions in the brain. Cognition and Emotion, 3, 267-289.
50.
Leventhal, H., Watts, J. C., & Pagano, F. (1967). Effects of fear and instructions on how to cope with danger. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 6, 313-321.
51.
Lord, C. G., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1979). Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 2098-2109.
52.
Mackie, D. M., & Worth, L. T. (1991). Feeling good, but not thinking straight: The impact of positive mood on persuasion. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Emotion and social judgments (pp. 201-219). Oxford, England: Pergamon.
53.
Manstead, A. S. R. (1991). Emotion in social life. Cognition and Emotion, 5, 353-362.
54.
Marcus, G. E. (1988). The structure of emotional response: 1984 presidential candidates. American Political Science Review, 82, 737-761.
55.
Marcus, G. E. (1991). Emotions and politics: Hot cognitions and the rediscovery of passion. Biology and Social Life, 30, 195-232.
56.
Marcus, G. E., & MacKuen, M. (1993). Anxiety, enthusiasm, and the vote: The emotional underpinnings of learning and involvement during presidential campaigns. American Political Science Review, 87, 672-685.
57.
Markus, G. B., & Converse, P. E. (1979). A dynamic simultaneous equation of electoral choice. American Political Science Review, 73, 1055-1070.
58.
Martin, L. L., Ward, D. W., Achee, J. W., & Wyer, R. S. (1993). Mood as input: People have to interpret the motivational implications of their moods. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 317-326.
59.
Masters, R. D. (1991). Individual and cultural differences in response to leaders' nonverbal displays. Journal of Social Issues, 47, 151-165.
60.
Masters, R. D., & Sullivan, D. G. (1989). Nonverbal displays and political leadership in France and the United States. Political Behavior, 11, 123-156.
61.
Masters, R. D., & Sullivan, D. G. (1993). Nonverbal behavior and leadership: Emotion and cognition in political information processing. In S. Iyengar & W. J. McGuire (Eds.), Explorations in political psychology (pp. 150-182). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
62.
Masters, R. D., Sullivan, D. G., Lanzetta, J. T., McHugo, G. J., & Englis, B. G. (1986). The facial displays of leaders: Toward an ethology of human politics. Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 9, 319-343.
63.
Matsumoto, D. (1993). Ethnic differences in affect intensity, emotion judgments, display rule attitudes, and self-reported emotional expression in an American sample. Motivation and Emotion, 17, 107-123.
64.
McClosky, H. (1958). Conservatism and personality. American Political Science Review, 52, 27-45.
65.
McGuire, W. J. (1985). Attitudes and attitude change. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (Vol. 2, 3rd ed., pp. 233-346). New York: Random House.
66.
McHugo, G. J., Lanzetta, J. T., & Bush, L. K. (1991) The effect of attitudes on emotional reactions to expressive displays of political leaders. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 15, 19-41.
67.
McHugo, G. J., Lanzetta, J. T., Sullivan, D. G., Masters, R. D., & Englis, B. G. (1985). Emotional reactions to a political leader's expressive displays. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1513-1529.
68.
Milburn, M. A. (1991). Persuasion and politics: The social psychology of public opinion. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
69.
Mullen, B., Futrell, D., Stairs, D., Tice, D. M., Baumeister, R. F., Dawson, K. E., Riordan, C. A., Radloff, C. E., Goethals, G. R., Kennedy, J. G., & Rosenfeld, P. (1986). Newscasters' facial expressions and voting behavior of viewers: Can a smile elect a president?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 291-295.
70.
Murphy, S. T., & Zajonc, R. B. (1993). Affect, cognition, and awareness: Affective priming with optimal and suboptimal stimulus exposures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 723-739.
71.
Newhagen, J. E., & Reeves, B. (1991). Emotion and memory responses for negative political advertising: A study of television commercials used in the 1988 presidential election. In F. Biocca (Ed.), Television and political advertising: Vol. 1. Psychological processes (pp. 197-220). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
72.
Newman, B. I., & Sheth, J. N. (1985). A model of primary voter behavior. Journal of Consumer Research, 12, 178-187.
73.
Newton, J. S., Masters, R. D., McHugo, G. J., & Sullivan, D. G. (1987). Making up our minds: Effects of network coverage on viewer impressions of leaders. Polity, 20, 226-246.
74.
Niedenthal, P. M. (1990). Implicit perception of affective information. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 26, 505-527.
75.
Niedenthal, P. M., & Setterlund, M. B. (1994). Emotion congruence in perception. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 401-411.
76.
Niedenthal, P. M., & Showers, C. (1991). The perception and processing of affective information and its influences on social judgment. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Emotion and social judgments (pp. 125-143). Oxford, England: Pergamon.
77.
Nisbett, R., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
78.
Ottati, V. C., & Isbell, L. M. (1996). Effects of mood during exposure to target information on subsequently reported judgments: An online model of misattribution and correction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 39-53.
79.
Ottati, V., Terkildsen, N., & Hubbard, C. (1997). Happy faces elicit heuristic processing in a televised impression formation task: A cognitive tuning account. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 1144-1156.
80.
Ottati, V. C., & Wyer, R. S. (1993). Affect and political judgment. In S. Iyengar & W. J. McGuire (Eds.), Explorations in political psychology (pp. 296-315). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
81.
Palfai, T. P., & Salovey, P. (1993). The influence of depressed and elated mood on deductive and inductive reasoning. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 13, 57-71.
82.
Patterson, M. L., Churchill, M. E., Burger, G. K., & Powell, J. L. (1992). Verbal and nonverbal modality effects on impressions of political candidates: Analysis from the 1984 presidential debates. Communication Monographs, 59, 231-242.
83.
Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1979). Issue involvement can increase or decrease persuasion by enhancing message-relevant cognitive responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology37, 1915-1926.
84.
Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.
85.
Petty, R. E., Gleicher, F., & Baker, S. M. (1991). Multiple roles for affect in persuasion. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Emotion and social judgments (pp. 181-199). Oxford, England: Pergamon.
86.
Petty, R. E., Priester, J. R., & Wegener, D. T. (1994). Cognitive processes in attitude change. In R. S. Wyer Jr. & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition: Vol. 2. Applications (pp. 69-142). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
87.
Petty, R. E., Schumann, D. W., Richman, S. A., & Strathman, A. J. (1993). Positive mood and persuasion: Different roles for affect under high-and low-elaboration conditions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 5-20.
88.
Popkin, S. L. (1991). The reasoning voter: Communication and persuasion in presidential campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
89.
Pratto, F., & John, O. P. (1991). Automatic vigilance: The attentiongrabbing power of negative social information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 380-391.
90.
Ragsdale, L. (1991). Strong feelings: Emotional responses to presidents. Political Behavior, 13, 33-65.
91.
Rahn, W. M., Aldrich, J. H., Borgida, E., & Sullivan, J. L. (1990). A social-cognitive model of candidate appraisal. In J. Ferejohn & J. Kuklinski (Eds.), Information and democratic processes (pp. 136-159). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
92.
Rahn, W. M., Kroeger, B., & Kite, C. M. (1996). A framework for the study of public mood. Political Psychology, 17, 29-58.
93.
Roseman, I., Abelson, R. P., & Ewing, M. F. (1986). Emotion and political cognition: Emotional appeals in political communication. In R. R. Lau & D. O. Sears (Eds.), Political cognition (pp. 279-294). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
94.
Rosenberg, S. W., Kahn, S., & Tran, T. (1991). Creating a political image: Shaping appearance and manipulating the vote. Political Behavior, 13, 345-367.
95.
Rosenberg, S. W., & McCafferty, P. (1987). The image and the vote: Manipulating voters' preferences. Public Opinion Quarterly, 51, 31-47.
96.
Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9, 185-211.
97.
Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1994). Some final thoughts about personality and intelligence. In R. J. Sternberg & P. Ruzgis (Eds.), Intelligence and personality (pp. 303-318). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
98.
Schwarz, N. (1990). Feelings as information: Informational and motivational functions of affective states. In E. T. Higgins & R. M. Sorrentino (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition (Vol. 2, pp. 527-561). New York: Guilford.
99.
Schwarz, N., & Bless, H. (1991). Happy and mindless, but sad and smart? The impact of affective states on analytic reasoning. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Emotion and social judgments (pp. 55-71). Oxford, England: Pergamon.
100.
Schwarz, N., Bless, H., & Bohner, G. (1991). Mood and persuasion: Affective states influence the processing of persuasive communications. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 24, 161-195.
101.
Schwarz, N., & Clore, G. L. (1983). Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 513-523.
102.
Schwarz, N., Strack, F., Kommer, D., & Wagner, D. (1987). Soccer, rooms, and the quality of your life: Mood effects on judgments of satisfaction with life in general and with specific domains. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 17, 69-77.
103.
Seligman, M. E. P. (1990). Learned optimism. New York: Knopf.
104.
Shields, S. A., & MacDowell, K. A. (1987). “Appropriate” emotion in politics: Judgments of a televised debate. Journal of Communication, 37, 78-89.
105.
Simon, A. (1994). Judgments of a woman's emotions: The influence of observer attitudes. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24, 251-259.
106.
Sinclair, R. C., & Mark, M. M. (1992). The influence of mood state on judgment and action: Effects on persuasion, categorization, social justice, person perception, and judgmental accuracy. In L. L. Martin & A. Tesser (Eds.), The construction of social judgments (pp. 165-193). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
107.
Stroud, L., Glaser, J., & Salovey, P. (1997). The effects of partisanship and candidate emotional intensity on political judgment. Unpublished manuscript, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
108.
Sullivan, D. G., & Masters, R. D. (1988). “Happy warriors”: Leaders' facial displays, viewers' emotions, and political support. American Journal of Political Science, 32, 345-368.
109.
Sutherland, S. L., & Tanenbaum, E. J. (1984). Irrational versus rational bases of political preference: Elite and mass perspectives. Political Psychology, 5, 173-197.
110.
Sweeney, P. D., & Gruber, K. L. (1984). Selective exposure: Voter information preferences and the Watergate affair. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 1208-1221.
111.
Tomkins, S. S. (1991). Affect, imagery, consciousness (Vol. 4). New York: Springer.
112.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131.
113.
Udolf, R. (1973). Liberal and conservative political stereotypes in terms of belief response hierarchies. Psychological Reports, 32, 275-284.
114.
Wegener, D. T., Petty, R. E., & Smith, S. M. (1995). Positive mood can increase or decrease message scrutiny: The hedonic contingency view of mood and message processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 5-15.
115.
Weiss, W., & Fine, B. J. (1956). The effect of induced aggressiveness on opinion change. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52, 109-114.
116.
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 52-80.
117.
Zajonc, R. B. (1980). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35, 151-175.
118.
Zajonc, R. B. (1984a). The interaction of affect and cognition. In K. R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotions (pp. 239-246). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
119.
Zajonc, R. B. (1984b). On primacy of affect. In K. R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotions (pp. 259-270). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
120.
Zullow, H. M., Oettingen, G., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1988). Pessimistic explanatory style in the historical record: CAVing LBJ, presidential candidates, and East versus West Berlin. American Psychologist, 43, 673-682.
