VIEW FROM A DISCIPLINE

Emotion Review
Vol. 3, No. 4 (October 2011) 455–463
© The Author(s) 2011
ISSN 1754-0739
Current Emotion Research in Political Science: DOI: 10.1177/1754073911410746
er.sagepub.com

How Emotions Help Democracy Overcome its

Collective Action Problem

Eric Groenendyk
Department of Political Science, University of Memphis, USA

Abstract
Though scholars have long acknowledged the vital role of affect in politics, recent research has sought to more thoroughly inte-
grate emotions into models of political behavior. Emotions may prove to be the missing piece in a variety of puzzles with which
political scientists have struggled for decades. At its core, democracy poses a collective action problem. For each individual citizen,
the cost of productive political engagement often outweighs the additional policy benefits to be gained from such behavior.
However, for a variety of reasons, emotions appear to motivate citizens to at times break out of “cold” individual utility calculation
and engage in politics. Still, emotions may also bias information processing, so scholars should keep this in mind as we continue
to build on our understanding of emotion’s role in politics.

Keywords
collective action, deliberation, emotion, information processing, information seeking, political participation, politics, tolerance

Popular sovereignty bestows upon each citizen the responsibility
to evaluate government and hold officials accountable for their
job performance. However, because effective governance is a
public good, each individual citizen has an incentive to shirk this
responsibility. Though we all desire good government, the cost
of acquiring information, setting aside one’s biases, and turning
out to vote on Election Day often outweighs the policy benefits
to be gained from such actions. At its very root, therefore,
democracy poses a substantial collective action problem. Much
of political science, particularly research on public opinion and
political behavior, is implicitly—if not explicitly—devoted to
understanding how we might overcome this innate conundrum.
Stunting our progress is the fact that political science has,
like many other fields, often viewed passion as the enemy of
reason. Normative political theorists have long considered emo-
tion integral to understanding politics (see Neblo, 2007), but
such discussion has often been motivated by the perceived harm
of emotion in democratic deliberation (Habermas, 1979, 1984;
Rawls, 1971).1 Positive political theorists, on the other hand,
have largely avoided discussion of emotion altogether by focus-
ing instead on “cold” voter calculus (see Downs, 1957, for the
classic example).2 And while empirical scholarship regularly
acknowledges the importance of emotion to our understanding
of politics, it is often measured only indirectly (see Campbell,
Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960; Sears, Lau, Tyler, & Allen,
1980, for classic examples).3
Fortunately, however, the tide has begun to turn. In recent
years, the scholarly dialogue regarding the role of emotion in
politics has gained in both volume and sophistication. My
review of this literature will focus on the democratic challenges
political scholars hope to address with their work. Do citizens
acquire the information they need to make informed political
decisions? Do they effectively convert that information into
opinions? And if so, will they express these opinions through
political participation? Moreover, will they be willing to toler-
ate others’ opinions and behavior for the good of democracy?
Given that democracy provides individual citizens with rela-
tively little incentive to bear these costs, each of these questions
comes back to motivation. Lucky for us, and counter to conven-
tional wisdom, it seems that Mother Nature has endowed us
with passion to prevent reason from running amuck.
The Individual in the Public Sphere
If one vote is so unlikely to impact the outcome of an election,
why do so many individuals decide to participate in politics?
Something seems to be missing from the standard cost–benefit

Corresponding author: Eric Groenendyk, Department of Political Science, University of Memphis, 419 Clement Hall, Memphis, TN 38152, USA. Email: grnendyk@memphis.edu
456  Emotion Review Vol. 3 No. 4
account (see Downs, 1957) of why citizens get involved in
politics, and that “something” is emotion. The notion of politi-
cal behavior as a series of “cold” utility calculations conflicts
with the images we see around us on a daily basis. Our per-
sonal experiences tell us that people get involved in politics, not
necessarily because they expect a payoff, but because they feel
compelled by their emotions. This is not to say that emotions
cause citizens to act irrationally, but rather, emotions must,
quite literally, be factored into the equation.
From a biological standpoint, those who are able to over-
come collective action problems will have an adaptive advan-
tage, because the ability to work together facilitates survival.4
Clearly, humans have overcome collective action problems to
build the civilized world, but how has this been possible when
each individual has an incentive to act selfishly rather than
to pursue the public good? Recent research on group-level
­emotion offers tantalizing evidence.
Intergroup emotions theory suggests that, when social iden-
tity is salient, group identifiers will appraise stimuli in the
group context as opposed to the individual context (Mackie,
Devos, & Smith, 2000; E. R. Smith, 1993; E. R. Smith, Seger,
& Mackie, 2007). In other words, individuals experience emo-
tions on behalf of their group. In a series of studies, Mackie et al.
(2000) show that individuals report more anger when they feel
that their ingroup is strong, and this anger leads to a greater
willingness to act against relevant outgroups. These group-level
emotions are empirically distinct from individual-level emotions.
In particular, one’s strength of party identification affects the
emotions a person experiences, and these emotions in turn
affect attitudes and behavior (Groenendyk & Banks, 2010;
E. R. Smith et al., 2007).
These works imply that evolution may have provided
humans with a means by which to overcome collective action
dilemmas (see Groenendyk & Banks, 2010; Miller, 2005). The
very act of identifying with a powerful group like a political
party should instill a sense of control and therefore shape one’s
emotional experiences (C. A. Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). If
these emotions promote collective action, then emotions may
function as an override switch that breaks individuals out of
self-interested behavior and promotes behavior on behalf of a
salient group. In short, while we may think like individuals, our
brains have evolved to allow us to feel like groups (Groenendyk
& Banks, 2010).
In the realm of politics, therefore, it should come as no sur-
prise that group identity, particularly party identity, is among
the strongest and most consistent predictors of behavior. If an
individual identifies with a political party, interest group, or
social movement, threats to the group are experienced as threats
to the self. These stimuli lead to shared emotions across the
group, and these emotions promote particular behaviors.
Therefore actions that may at first appear irrational from the
standpoint of each individual, are quite rational from a wider
evolutionary perspective because those ancestors who demon-
strated the capacity to overcome collective action dilemmas had
a distinct survival advantage (Axelrod & Hamilton, 1981). Of
course, even if emotions provide individuals with group-level
motivation, this is only one step (albeit a big one) toward
successful democratic governance.5
Acquiring Information
With the advent of modern survey methodology in the first
half of the 20th century, political scientists began to docu-
ment the shortcomings of the American voter. Not only were
citizens found to possess scant information regarding policy
issues, but many also lacked a basic understanding of gov-
ernment institutions and knowledge of who was in power
(Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996). In addition, citizens proved
to be “innocent of ideology,” or much of any other structure
for organizing their political attitudes (Converse, 1964). In
fact, an alarming number of people appeared to exhibit
“nonattitudes”—apparently responding to survey questions
at random to avoid seeming ignorant.
During the mid-20th century, these data echoed the conclu-
sion being drawn from concurrent theoretical work discussed
in the introduction. Voters had little incentive to engage in
politics, and this was reflected in the data. But, how had
American democracy survived and even flourished for
200 years if voters were so incompetent? Building on the
paradigm-shifting work of Herbert Simon (1979), scholarly
attention turned to voters’ use of heuristics and information
shortcuts to guide their decision making (Lupia, 1994; Lupia &
McCubbins, 1998; Popkin, 1991; Sniderman, Brody, &
Tetlock, 1991). A number of important works concluded that
voters could get by despite their lack of information by follow-
ing cues from parties and interest groups (Brady & Sniderman,
1985; Kam, 2005; Lupia, 1994; Lupia & McCubbins, 1998;
Popkin, 1991). Still, building on the work of Tversky and
Kahneman (1974), others argued that heuristics were just as
likely to lead voters astray in many instances (Cohen, 2003;
Kuklinski & Quirk, 2000; Lau & Redlawsk, 2001; Lodge &
Hamill, 1986). What then should we make of voters’ use of
information shortcuts? Do they facilitate voters’ ability to hold
officials accountable, or do they mislead them?
Recent scholarship suggests that emotions may help citizens
use political heuristics more efficiently. According to the theory
of affective intelligence (Marcus, Neuman, & MacKuen, 2000),
emotions complement reason by signaling to the brain when to
rely on heuristic processes and when to expend greater cognitive
effort. Building on the work of Jeffrey Gray (1987a, 1987b,
1990), Marcus et al. (2000) theorize that habits and routines are
governed by a “disposition system.” More specifically, the enthu-
siasm an individual experiences as she progresses toward her
goals serves as feedback that helps her to develop and refine
behavioral habits and routines. The development of such routines
increases cognitive efficiency by allowing the body to allocate its
resources to other areas. The “surveillance system” functions as
an interruption mechanism to redirect the individual’s attention
when novelty arises in one’s environment. When an individual
encounters such a stimulus, her anxiety triggers an increase in
attention to incoming information. Marcus and colleagues find
 Groenendyk  Current Emotion Research in Political Science   457
that, as a result, anxious voters pay more attention to politics,
rely less on party identification (Marcus & MacKuen, 1993;
Marcus et al., 2000) and ideology (MacKuen, Marcus, Neuman,
& Keele, 2007), and consider candidate characteristics and
policy preferences more carefully when deciding for whom to
vote (MacKuen et al. 2007; Marcus & MacKuen, 1993; Marcus
et al., 2000).6
While affective intelligence is the most prominent theory
regarding the role of emotion in politics, it is not without its
critics. After attempting to apply this theory to the Quebecois
movement, Nadeau, Niemi, and Amato (1995) conclude that
anxiety has only an indirect influence on the acquisition of
political knowledge. More specifically, they find that, in com-
bination with an expectation of political success, anxiety
increases issue importance. In other words, anxiety does not
function as a habit interruption system that stimulates increased
processing effort. Instead, individuals merely reprioritize those
issues that make them anxious and learn more about those
issues as a result of their perceived importance.
Ladd and Lenz (2008) also attempt to replicate one of Marcus
et al.’s (2000) central findings using pooled time series data from
the American National Election Studies (ANES) as well as the
1980 ANES Major Panel Study to facilitate causal interpretation.
Despite Marcus et al.’s claim that anxiety decreases the impact of
party identification and increases the influence of contemporary
political evaluations on vote intentions, Ladd and Lenz’s results
suggest that causality runs primarily in the opposite direction.
“Instead of anxiety leading people to eschew partisanship and
rely more on policy positions and candidate qualities, anxiety
leads to the appearance of these findings because it is largely
driven by prior candidate evaluations” (p. 293). In other words,
Ladd and Lenz favor a model in which candidate evaluation
precedes emotion, and voters merely experience anxiety toward
candidates whom they dislike. Marcus, MacKuen, and Neuman
(2011) dispute this conclusion, arguing that Ladd and Lenz have
misspecified their model by including inappropriate control vari-
ables and altering the dependent variable. However, as Ladd and
Lenz (2011) point out, this rebuttal only addresses the findings
that they obtain using the ANES time series and not those
­uncovered in the 1980 Major Panel Study.
Still, despite Ladd and Lenz’s (2008) contention, the theory
of affective intelligence comports quite nicely with findings in
affective neuroscience and the results of a number of political
studies. Despite Ladd and Lenz’s difficulty in replicating
Marcus and colleagues’ voting result, affective intelligence
“unifies predictions about a broader set of outcomes that
include not only political evaluations or choice, but also infor-
mation seeking, learning, and motivation to take political action
(as well as predications about the sources of emotions)”
(Brader, 2011). Some of the most persuasive evidence for the
theory of affective intelligence comes from two experiments in
which Brader (2005, 2006) examines the causal impact of
political ads containing emotionally evocative music and imagery
versus identical ads devoid of such content. Since the explosion
of political advertising in the late 20th century, advertising
effects have remained a hotly contested subject among scholars
of mass communication and political behavior. Brader’s work
directs the debate toward the emotions produced by these ads.7
He finds that, compared to those who viewed an identical ad
devoid of emotionally evocative imagery and music, partici-
pants exposed to an anxiety-inducing ad recalled more informa-
tion related to the ad, sought out more new information, and
were persuaded to favor the sponsor of the ad. Subjects exposed
to an enthusiasm-inducing ad demonstrated more motivation
to participate in the campaign and greater reliance on prior
­predispositions.
Recent work by Valentino and colleagues provides addi-
tional evidence that anxiety promotes information seeking
(Valentino, Hutchings, Banks, & Davis, 2008) and learning
(Hutchings, Valentino, Philpot, & White, 2006; Valentino et al.,
2008).8 However, anxiety only appears to decrease selective
exposure when counterattitudinal information is useful (i.e.,
participants were warned that they would need to defend their
candidate selection) (Valentino, Banks, Hutchings, & Davis,
2009). Using the dynamic process-tracing method they devel-
oped to simulate exposure to a real campaign, Redlawsk,
Civettini, and Lau (2007) also found that anxiety leads to
increased information seeking. But Civettini and Redlawsk
(2009) see no evidence to indicate that anxiety increases
­information recall above and beyond other emotions.
In addition to the role played by anxiety and enthusiasm,
mounting evidence suggests that anger also influences the
acquisition of political information.9 More specifically, anger
leads citizens to close themselves off to new and counterattitu-
dinal information. For instance, Valentino et al. (2008) find that
anger decreases the amount of time people spend searching for
information about candidates’ issue positions. Redlawsk et al.
(2007) find that when individuals experience inconsistency
between their own issue positions and those of a preferred
political candidate, they become angry and this decreases their
motivation to seek out information about that candidate.
MacKuen, Wolak, Keele, and Marcus (2010) argue that “aversion”
(a variable they construct from measures of anger, disgust, con-
tempt, and bitterness) undermines democratic deliberation,
while anxiety promotes deliberation. More specifically, they
find that while anxiety leads to an increased desire to learn
about the opposition’s position and promotes open-minded
information seeking, aversion leads to exactly the opposite.
In their examination of attitudes toward the Iraq War, Huddy,
Feldman, and Cassese (2007) find that anxiety correlates posi-
tively with the amount of time spent thinking about and discuss-
ing the war. On the other hand, anger appears to increase
thought but decrease thoughtfulness. More specifically, anger
increases time spent thinking about the war but undercuts the
impact of information on attitudes toward the risk of going to
war, threat from Saddam Hussein, and support for the war.
Accessing Information and Reporting Opinions
In addition to understanding how emotions affect information
acquisition, a number of works investigate the role of emotions
458  Emotion Review Vol. 3 No. 4
in opinion formation. Assuming citizens acquire the information
needed to make informed political decisions, are they able and
willing to effectively integrate this information into their exist-
ing opinions? Building heavily on Abelson’s (1963) “hot cogni-
tion hypothesis,” a number of studies suggest that political
objects in memory are stored with affective tags,10 so whenever
an object becomes accessible, its affective tag is automatically
accessed as well (Lodge & Taber, 2005; Lodge, Taber, & Weber,
2006; Redlawsk, 2002, 2006).11 Cassino and Lodge (2007) find
that these affective tags are generated automatically upon
­exposure to political candidates without cognitive mediation.
While affective tagging is not necessarily a problem in and
of itself, a number of studies point out troubling implications.
Cassino and Lodge (2007) find that immediate affective reac-
tions drive candidate evaluations even after individuals are
presented with subsequent information. And Redlawsk (2006)
finds that when people encounter information that is incongru-
ent with their affective tags, they actually recall congruent
memories that help bolster their existing attitudes. Likewise,
Westen, Blagov, Harenski, Kilts, and Hamann (2006) show that
when partisans receive information inconsistent with their can-
didate preference, brain regions associated with emotion and
motivation12 become activated and regions associated with
“cold” cognition and emotion regulation13 remain inactive. In a
survey experiment run in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,
Malhotra and Kuo (2009) find that a combination of intense
anger and sadness increase the impact of partisan cues on blame
attribution and decrease the influence of more informative cues.
Still, Redlawsk, Civettini, and Emmerson (2010) find that a
“tipping point” does exist. As people are confronted with more
and more incongruent information, their anxiety builds until
they finally begin to accurately update their evaluations.
Similarly, Groenendyk (2009) finds that, when placed under
cognitive load, the most vulnerable partisans’ defenses break
down and they begin to update their party identities to reflect
inconsistent attitudes.
In addition to the role of affect in motivated political rea-
soning, others demonstrate that affect can function as a source
of information (Schwarz & Clore, 1983). Across a number of
studies, scholars find that political evaluations are informed
by an individual’s mood (see Isbell & Ottati, 2002; Isbell,
Ottati, & Burns, 2006, for reviews), the public’s mood (Rahn,
2000), subliminal affective priming (Weinberger & Westen,
2008), and even the outcome of sporting events (Healy,
Malhotra, & Mo, 2010). Similarly, Lerner and Keltner’s
(2000, 2001) appraisal tendency theory suggests the appraisals
associated with particular emotions shape subsequent evalua-
tions. Huddy et al. (2007) apply this theory to survey data on
opinions toward the Iraq War. They find that, while anxiety
increases the perception that the Iraq War poses a risk, anger
decreases this perception. As a result, angry individuals express
greater support for the Iraq War, while anxious individuals
show less support.
However, such results are not restricted to risk appraisals.
Small, Lerner, and Fischhoff (2006) induce emotions experi-
mentally in the wake of the September 11 attacks and find that
anger increases causal attributions. Similar results emerge in
their examination of welfare policy opinions. Anger reduces the
amount of welfare assistance participants recommend, while
sadness increases the generosity of welfare recommendations
relative to neutral emotion. Interestingly, these effects disappear
when cognitive resources are inhibited—reinforcing the theory
that these findings result from emotionally induced cognitive
appraisals (Small & Lerner, 2008).
Emotion and Campaign Participation
In addition to acquiring information, citizens must act on this
information for democracy to flourish. Unfortunately, democ-
racy faces twin challenges in this regard. First, a citizen must
possess the resources necessary for participation (Wolfinger &
Rosenstone, 1980). For example, in order to attend a rally, a
meeting, or even vote, a citizen must have transportation, know
where to go, and have the time to engage in such an activity.
And a person obviously needs money if he or she wishes to
donate to a campaign. In addition to resources, an individual
must possess the motivation to participate in politics (Verba,
Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). Recent research suggests emotions
are linked to both. First, as discussed earlier, party identification
leads to group-level emotions that stimulate participation
(Groenendyk & Banks, 2010; E. R. Smith et al., 2007). Second,
emotions trigger political interest (Brader, 2005, 2006; Marcus
et al., 2000). Third, certain emotions promote the expenditure of
resources on politics (Valentino, Brader, Groenendyk,
Gregorowicz, & Hutchings, 2011).
The theory of affective intelligence suggests that campaign
participation is driven by the same set of processes as informa-
tion acquisition. Both anxiety and enthusiasm spur citizens to
get off the couch and out to rallies, meetings, and voting
booths. However, while anxiety exerts its influence by motivat-
ing citizens to survey their political environment for hidden
dangers, enthusiasm leads citizens to “become emotionally
involved,” “pay attention to the daily tournament’s progress,”
and “develop habits of attentiveness and interest that keep them
involved over time” (Marcus et al., 2000, pp. 93–94). In sup-
port of this claim, Marcus et al.’s (2000) survey analyses show
that both anxiety and enthusiasm are associated with campaign
interest and participation.
Brader (2005, 2006) finds similar but not identical results in
his experimental analysis. Participants exposed to an enthusiasm-
evoking political ad reported higher levels of campaign inter-
est, intention to register, intention to vote in both the primary
and general election, and a greater willingness to work for a
campaign relative to those exposed to an identical ad without
music or imagery designed to evoke enthusiasm. However, he
finds fear ads to have a much narrower impact. Participants in
the fear condition expressed only a greater willingness to work
for the campaign and a stronger belief in the importance of
­voting. And only subjects high in political knowledge expressed
a greater likelihood of registering and voting in the general
election.
 Groenendyk  Current Emotion Research in Political Science   459
One explanation for these differing anxiety effects is
methodology. Brader manipulates anxiety and enthusiasm
directly through an experiment, while Marcus et al. (2000) rely
on correlations in survey data. Another possibility is measure-
ment. While Brader induces fear and enthusiasm, Marcus et al.
operationalize anxiety by combining measures of anxiety with
measures of anger. A third possible explanation for these diver-
gent anxiety effects is that this particular emotion causes a
variety of downstream effects—some of which promote politi-
cal participation and some of which discourage it. For example,
anxiety has been shown to increase cognitive vigilance (Brader,
2005, 2006; Hutchings et al., 2006; MacKuen et al., 2010;
Marcus et al., 2000; Redlawsk et al., 2007; Valentino et al.,
2008, 2009), but it is also associated with risk aversion (Huddy
et al., 2007; Huddy, Feldman, Taber, & Lahav, 2005; Lerner &
Keltner, 2000, 2001).
In an attempt to sort things out, Valentino et al. (2011) con-
duct a series of studies using multiple methods to distinguish
between the effects of anger, fear, and enthusiasm on political
participation. They begin by experimentally inducing emotions
in a laboratory setting. They then conduct a panel survey with
waves occurring before and after the 2008 election. And, final-
ly, they examine ANES data collected between 1980 and 2004.
They theorize that fear should trigger an immediate and reflex-
ive increase in surveillance, but it should not motivate partici-
patory activities that require sustained effort over an extended
timeframe.14 Anger and enthusiasm, on the other hand, should
promote precisely these types of behaviors. As predicted,
anger,15 and to a lesser extent enthusiasm, consistently predict
higher levels of political participation across studies, while fear
shows very sporadic effects. In particular, anger and enthusiasm
promote more costly types of participation whereas fear is only
associated with “cheap” forms of participation. In addition,
anger and enthusiasm exert a greater impact among those who
possess resources, whereas fear does not interact with resources.
In addition to motivating participation in a given campaign,
Valentino, Gregorowicz, and Groenendyk (2009) also find that
anger facilitates the development of participatory habits. More
specifically, a higher sense of internal political efficacy pro-
motes political participation via anger—particularly among
young people who are less likely to have developed participa-
tory habits. Successful participation then leads to increased
internal efficacy, thereby creating a feedback loop that promotes
the development of such habits.
Emotion and (In)Tolerance
The studies reviewed thus far have examined the role of emo-
tions in motivating individuals to engage in politics and over-
come democracy’s innate collective action problem. Results
suggest that emotions are vital to understanding when and why
voters seek out political information, how this information is
converted into political evaluations, and when citizens are suf-
ficiently motivated to participate in politics. However, it is
important to recognize that each individual does not operate in
a political vacuum. Deliberation between citizens is necessary
for democracy to flourish, and this requires tolerance (Habermas,
1979). So how do emotions affect tolerance and deliberation?
Through a series of survey experiments, Marcus and col-
leagues discover that people rely on habits of political tolerance
when their environment is safe, familiar, and normatively com-
pliant (Marcus, Sullivan, Theiss-Morse, & Wood, 1995; Marcus,
Wood, & Theiss-Morse, 1998). Intolerance, on the other hand,
serves as a “defensive adaptation” recruited when norm viola-
tions trigger anxiety. Moreover, in contrast to the predictions of
rational actor and protection motivation theories, political toler-
ance is unaffected by an increase in the probability of influence
by a threatening group.
Brader, Valentino, and Suhay (2008) obtain somewhat simi-
lar results in their study of immigration attitudes. Specifically,
participants in their experiment report higher levels of anxiety
in response to an immigration news story when the immigrant
mentioned in the story is Latino (as opposed to European or no
race or ethnicity identified) and the story is framed in terms of
costs as opposed to benefits. This anxiety mediates the impact
of the treatment of support for English-only language require-
ments, requests for anti-immigration information, and the prob-
ability of sending an anti-immigration message to Congress.
Perceived harm, on the other hand, does not mediate any of
these behavioral or opinion effects.
Recent works attempt to distinguish between the role of
anxiety and anger—suggesting that anger may be the primary
driver of intolerance. MacKuen et al. (2010) (previously men-
tioned) find that anger reduces willingness to consider new
information and increases commitment to predispositions,
while Banks and Valentino (2007) find that anger increases the
impact of racial resentment on policy attitudes. Through a series
of studies conducted in Israel, Halperin, Canetti-Nisim, and
Hirsch-Hoefler (2009) find that perceived threat triggers group-
based hatred and that hatred leads to political intolerance.
In short, while government by the people may very well be
unworkable without our emotions to motivate us, it is impor-
tant to remember that emotions may also have a dark side in
politics. To the degree emotions undermine political tolerance,
their effect on participation becomes far less desirable. As
political researchers extol emotions’ potential to invigorate
political engagement, we should keep in mind that the line
between activist and fanatic, public action group and mob, is
relatively fine.
Future Directions
In the polarized era we live in today, it seems that now more
than ever an understanding of emotion is central to compre-
hending public opinion and political behavior. Yet a number of
challenges lie ahead for our fledgling field. Two strike me as
particularly worthy of mentioning. First, we must gain a better
understanding of the conditions under which particular emo-
tions arise. If we hope to build a model of emotion’s role in
politics, we must understand the causes of emotions in addition
460  Emotion Review Vol. 3 No. 4
to their consequences. Second, we must move beyond the
debate regarding affective primacy versus cognitive appraisal
and instead focus on how emotions unfold over time. To the
degree that we rely on self-reports of emotion (and we do more
often than not), we must acknowledge that cognition has by this
time intervened.
The Origins of Emotion in Politics
Using data from the 1980 American National Election Study
(ANES), Abelson, Kinder, Peters, and Fiske (1982) conducted
the first major foray into political emotion. They found that
positive and negative emotions loaded onto two nearly independent
dimensions, and these affective dimensions strongly predicted
candidate preferences even after controlling for personality
judgments. Similar results were obtained by Marcus (1988)
using the 1984 ANES and Marcus and MacKuen (1993) using
the 1980 ANES and the 1988 Missouri Election Study. As a
result, circumplex models have tended to dominate in the
political science literature.
Conover and Feldman (1986), however, were the first to find
three distinct dimensions of affect in their examination of emo-
tional reactions to the economy—positive emotion, fear, and
anger. And though Marcus et al. (2000) examine only enthusi-
asm and anxiety (which they measure using anxiety and anger
items), they acknowledge that anger (what they call aversion)
sometimes loads onto a distinct dimension (see Appendix B of
Marcus et al., 2000). They theorize that novel stimuli elicit
anxiety, while aversion arises when an individual encounters a
familiar but hated stimulus (see also MacKuen et al., 2010;
Marcus, 2002; Marcus, MacKuen, Wolak, & Keele, 2006).
Brader, Groenendyk, and Valentino (2010) test this theory
along with the hypothesis that voters become angry when they
are able to attribute blame for a negative political event.
Though they warn readers not to read too much into a single
null result, they find no support for the novelty hypothesis.
However, they do find support for the hypothesis that political
anger arises when people are able to attribute blame to some-
one in government.16
Steenbergen and Ellis (2006) also attempt to isolate the
causes of political anxiety and anger (they also call it aversion)
using data on Jimmy Carter from the 1980 ANES and Bill
Clinton from the 1995 ANES. Similar to Brader et al. (2010),
they find that anger tends to arise when threats can be attributed
to the poor performance of a political figure or when a political
figure’s behavior conflicts with a citizen’s core beliefs.
In their examination of survey data on the Iraq War, Huddy
et al. (2007) remind us not neglect consideration of the target of
our emotion measures. In their survey, anxiety tends to be cor-
related across widely varying targets (Saddam Hussein, the Iraq
War, and terrorists), while anger tends to be target specific. For
example, anger about the Iraq War shows almost no correlation
with anger toward Saddam Hussein or terrorists. In short, it
appears that attribution may be at work here as well. While
people tend to show generalized anxiety regarding objects
related to the Iraq War, anger appears to be targeted toward
those who are blameworthy—either the enemy or the United
States government for getting us into the war.17
Gross and colleagues examine the impact of news frames on
emotions. In one experiment, Gross (2008) finds evidence that
episodic frames elicit sympathy and pity, while the same stories
elicit very little emotion when framed thematically. Gross and
D’Ambrosio (2004) also find that frames interact with predispo-
sitions such as ideology and racial resentment to shape emo-
tions. Specifically, they find that situational frames provoke
anger among liberals, but reduce anger among conservatives.
When given a dispositional frame, racially resentful individuals
report higher levels of disgust.
Future studies should continue to investigate the circum-
stances in which political emotions diverge from the basic cir-
cumplex model and what types of appraisals function as the
trigger. Increased attention to the target of emotions seems to be
particularly warranted. Ideally, this will help researchers to dis-
tinguish between circumstances in which emotions facilitate
political engagement versus those in which emotions breed
intolerance and undermine deliberation.
Emotions Over Time
Thus far, thanks in large part to the theory of affective intelli-
gence, our understanding of emotion’s role in politics has been
dramatically influenced by neuroscience. Such theories provide
us with a strong foundation. However, researchers should be
cognizant of the match between theory and measurement. When
we rely on self-reported emotions, we are capturing conscious
affect that has likely been shaped by cognition. Therefore, when
building theories to explain empirical relationships between
self-reported emotions, opinions, and behaviors, cognitive
appraisals must be considered. On the other hand, we must also
be careful not to forget the neurochemical origins of emotion
and fixate too much attention downstream simply to facilitate
the use of self-reports. Future work should consider how emo-
tions unfold and interact with political cognition and behavior
over time (see Scherer, 2000; Spezio & Adolphs, 2007).
Notes
  1 See Krause (2008) for a rebuke of the emotion versus reason dichotomy
in normative political theory.
  2 See Lupia and Menning (2007, 2009) for a rebuke of the emotion versus
reason dichotomy in positive political theory.
 3 Party identification is conceptualized as an “affective attachment”
(Campbell et al., 1960), but only recently have scholars begun to explicitly
investigate the role of affect in party identification (Burden & Klofstad,
2005; Neely, 2007). Similarly, the symbolic politics literature suggests that
“people acquire stable affective preferences through conditioning in their
preadult years” (Sears et al., 1980), but only recently have scholars begun
to explicitly investigate how affect functions in symbolic politics (Banks &
Valentino, 2007; Brader & Valentino, 2007; Marcus et al., 1995; Marcus
et al., 1998).
 4 Schreiber (2007) explains that we evolved our current psychological
capacity precisely because it was helpful for dealing with the politics of
the complex social world our ancestors lived in.
  5 See Aminzade and McAdam (2001) for a particularly relevant discussion
of the role of emotion in social movements.
 Groenendyk  Current Emotion Research in Political Science   461
 6 Marcus and colleagues operationalize anxiety as a combination of
anxiety and anger after finding that they load onto the same dimension
in their data (MacKuen et al., 2007; Marcus & MacKuen, 1993; Marcus
et al., 2000). Marcus (1988) originally referred to this dimension as
“threat.” These authors acknowledge that anger and anxiety sometimes
load onto distinct dimensions. When this occurs, they refer to these
dimensions as “anxiety” and “aversion” (MacKuen et al., 2010; Marcus,
2002; Marcus et al., 2000).
  7 See also Just, Crigler, and Belt (2007) and Crigler, Just, and Belt (2006).
  8 Other studies suggest that news stories containing fear-arousing content
receive more attention (Graber, 2007), and negative emotion mediates
the relationship between news content and the perceived importance of
that content (Miller, 2007).
  9 It should be noted that interpretations of the political emotions literature
are potentially complicated by the fact that anxiety has often been
operationalized as a combination of anger and fear (Brader et al., 2008;
Marcus & MacKuen, 1993; Marcus et al., 2000; Rudolph, Gangl, &
Stevens, 2000).
10 Kinder (1994) contends that the emotion associated with a given
attitude can help us to distinguish between “nonattitudes” and those
held with conviction.
11 Morris, Squires, Taber, and Lodge (2003) report very similar results
obtained through the event-related potentials (ERPs) paradigm. This
method involves measuring changes in patterns of voltage in the brain
(i.e., the firing of neurons) using an electroencephalogram (EEG).
12 These include the lateral and medial orbital prefrontal cortex, anterior
cingulated cortex, posterior cingulated cortex, and insula.
13 This includes differential activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
14 See Spezio and Adolphs (2007) and Just et al. (2007) for discussions of
why emotion should be viewed as a dynamic process unfolding over time.
15 Lebel and Ronel (2009) also argue that anger plays a dominant role in
motivating political behavior. Looking at the specific case of bereaved
Israeli parents who lost children as a result of security-related issues
(operational accidents, terrorist attacks, and Israel Defence Forces
combat in Lebanon), they find that these parents’ anger motivates them
to become political entrepreneurs.
16 See Gamson (1992) for a discussion of the importance of blame in
mobilizing social movements.
17 Readers interested in the specific emotional underpinnings of attitudes
toward the Iraq War should also see Pagano and Huo (2007).
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