Happy Warriors: The Effects of Perceived Candidate Emotionality on Voter Preferences and Behavior

Transcription

1 Happy Warriors: The Effects of Perceived Candidate Emotionality on Voter Preferences and Behavior Proposed Questions for Inclusion in ANES Panel Study Jack Glaser Goldman School of Public Policy University of California, Berkeley January 31, 2007 (Key Words: Emotionality, affect, display, expressiveness, appropriateness) Conceptual and theoretical foundations of the questions Affect, including emotion, has been found to be influential in decisionmaking generally and with regard to voter decisionmaking, specifically. Most of this research, however, has focused on perceiver (or voter) affect (see Glaser & Salovey, 1998, for a review). For example, research by Schwarz and Clore (1983) on affect-as-information demonstrated that people infer their attitudes from their feelings, and this appears to occur in political decisionmaking as well (Ottati & Wyer, 1993; Ottati & Isbell, 1996). Furthermore, in studies employing NES data, Abelson, Kinder, Peters, and Fiske (1985) and Granberg and Brown (1989) demonstrated that voter affect had more influence on candidate preferences than did more cognitive factors like issue positions. Politicians and their advisors seem to at least tacitly understand this, as evidenced by the Goldwater campaign s admonition, In your heart, you know he s right. Much less is known about the effect of candidate emotions, but it seems likely that they would be influential in motivating voters and influencing their preferences. There is, in fact, ample evidence that voters use heuristics like candidate personality and party identification to make judgments having, in Popkin s (1991) words, low-information rationality. Voters have, for example, shown preferences for candidates based on mere photographs (Rosenberg, Kahn, &

2 2 Tran, 1991) or short video clips (Sullivan & Masters, 1988). With regard to candidate affect, we do know that potential voters physiological reactions to candidates affective displays can differ from self-reported candidate preferences (McHugo, Lanzetta, Sullivan, Masters, & Englis, 1985) and that low motivation voters are more likely to make heuristic judgments when viewing a happy candidate (Ottati, Terkildson, & Hubbard, 1997). More dramatically, Sullivan and Masters (1988) found that happy or reassuring candidate affective displays yielded more attitude change than did party identification, issue agreement, or leadership assessment. Tiedens (2001) has shown that anger displays increase status ratings of the target of judgment, relative to displays of sadness. If this is true for judgments of candidates as well, it could help to explain why public displays of sadness have been, at least anecdotally, so detrimental to candidates political fortunes. The only known study to experimentally manipulate the displayed emotionality of a candidate (Stroud, Glaser, & Salovey, 2006) found that an ostensible candidate who was more emotional overall was preferred, but only when his party label was not provided, in which case the less emotional candidate was preferred. This may be especially relevant for independent candidates, for independent voters, or for candidates in elections (e.g., local) where party identification is less prominent. Although not studying actual displays by candidates, Roseman, Abelson, & Ewing (1986) provided insight into the interplay of the emotionality of political persuasive appeals and voter affect. They found that the emotionality of a given political message can resonate with the emotional state of the recipient. For example, when voters are angry, they appear to respond well to angry messages. Fear-tinged messages, on the other hand, are not generally effective, unless they are mixed with hope, which is an effective affective frame for fearful audiences.

3 3 Anecdotal evidence provides some support for the idea that candidate emotional expressiveness is influential. Perhaps the best known example is Edmund Muskie s rapid descent in the 1968 Democratic presidential primary after he sobbed (or appeared to sob) during a public appearance. Considerable commentary was also made about 1988 Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis for appearing to be insufficiently emotional Democratic presidential aspirant Howard Dean drew heavy ridicule and criticism for his excessive and seemingly inappropriate affective display after performing more poorly than expected in early primaries. No doubt, politicians have to carry themselves with reasonable grace and dignity, and violations of basic norms for affective display are likely self-defeating. The questions remain: Are these norms more stringent and consequential for candidates; and which emotions, when displayed appropriately, are most influential? Theoretical foundations: There are several theoretical orientations within social and personality psychology that hold considerable promise to explain the effects of candidate emotionality. First, Salovey and Mayer s (1990) idea of emotional intelligence holds that people who are best able to read others emotions and display the most appropriate emotions will be particularly persuasive. Related to this is Ekman and Freisen s (1969) theory of display rules, which holds that cultures have distinct prescriptive and proscriptive rules for emotional display. It seems reasonable that politics has its own set of display rules, violations of which are harmful to candidacies, or at least that violations of normal display rules are especially detrimental to candidates viability. There is, in fact, some empirical basis for the premise that politicians have particularly constrained display parameters. Matsumoto (1990) found that relatively emotional displays were

4 4 judged more appropriate when made by low status rather than high status individuals, and that this was true for anger, disgust, fear, sadness, and surprise, but not for happiness. Given that candidates for high office are typically (if not by definition) high in status, this appears relevant. Another theoretical orientation holds promise to provide more specific predictions with regard to which emotions will be influential under what circumstances. Haidt s (2003) theory of moral emotions categorizes emotions into four primary categories: self-praising emotions such as pride, enthusiasm, and hope; self-conscious emotions such as embarrassment, shame, and guilt; other praising emotions like awe (admiration), gratitude, and love; and othercondemning emotions like anger, disgust, and contempt. A secondary category, othersuffering emotions, includes sympathy/compassion. According to Haidt, each of these emotions is associated with action tendencies that perceivers know and therefore anticipate upon witnessing affective displays. For example, anger is associated with revenge, disgust with avoidance or expulsion, and contempt with mockery. To the extent that voters at least think they can predict a candidate s action tendencies based on his or her dominant emotions, this approach could be very helpful in understanding how specific emotions affect judgments of candidates. Consequently, I propose including at least one emotion from each of the categories so that tests of the effects of each type of emotion group can be conducted. Haidt does not include the very basic emotions happiness and sadness in his model, but because of their very commonness and potential for influence (e.g., Tiedens, 2001) they should be included. A more direct set of trait inferences based on candidate emotions could also be laid out. Specifically, it seems reasonable to predict that candidates who appear hopeful and happy will be seen as being positive and constructive; those who appear angry may be seen as strong and competent (Tiedens, 2001), but perhaps also vengeful; those seen expressing fear may be

5 5 inferred to be weak; and those expressing disgust may be assumed to have moral certitude. Another theoretical consideration is that research has shown that information processing tends to be more systematic when people are sad and peripheral when happy (e.g., Alloy & Abramson, 1979). To the extent that candidate emotion can invoke sympathetic or reactive emotions in potential voters, eliciting sadness will be advantageous when messages are complex and happiness will help when they are simpler and/or deceptive. This thesis is supported by Ottati, Terkildson, and Hubbard s (1997) findings (discussed above). Perhaps most simply, it seems likely that positive affect on the part of candidates will have a direct effect on liking of them by voters. Finally, the overall valence of candidate affect may help to explain voter turnout. A preponderance of negativity may suppress voting among the candidate s party members. This too can be tested with the proposed questions. Proposed Questions: Questions 1a-j: The first set of questions (1a-j) simply aims to assess respondents perceptions of the frequency with which each candidate expresses various emotions theorized to be important. Ten emotions are included, to tap most basic emotions as well as some theorized to be important with regard to moral bases and action tendencies (Haidt, 2003). If the study could not accommodate all of these items, least essential would be AWED, COMPASSIONATE, and EMBARASSED. Proposed Question 1 Wording: People, including politicians, vary in the emotions they tend to exhibit. Following are a series of questions about the emotions of {candidates}. Based on your observations, how often would you say that {candidate} seems {emotion} never, rarely, sometimes, often, most of the time, always? {AWED, AFRAID, ANGRY, COMPASSIONATE, DISGUSTED, EMBARASSED, HAPPY, HOPEFUL, PROUD, SAD} Question 2:

6 6 While I predict that displays of specific emotions will differentially influence voters attitudes toward candidates, it also seems likely that general adherence to emotion display rules specific to electoral politics could affect voter attitudes and intentions. This could be studied by assessing people s views with regard to which emotional displays are appropriate when. However, the general goal can be more parsimoniously achieved with a single item that directly asks respondents if the candidate tends to express appropriate emotions, thereby exhorting respondents to invoke their own standards as well as their assessment of the candidate s adherence to it. Accordingly, I propose the following question be added to the survey: Proposed Question 2 Wording: In your opinion, how often does (the candidate) express the appropriate emotions at the appropriate times never, rarely, sometimes, often, most of the time, always? Why the proposed questions merit inclusion in the ANES survey. The proposed questions may relate to existing questions about voter emotional responses (angry, afraid, hopeful, proud) to candidates, perceptions of candidate attributes (e.g., strong, moral, knowledgeable), as well as intentions and behaviors with regard to turning out and voting preferences. In this sense, they will build nicely on the existing battery. More importantly, they will afford the unprecedented opportunity to examine the direct effects of perceived candidate emotionality on voter behavior. See more rationale under previous sections. Kinds and range of statistical analyses that the questions allow Response options in continuous 6-point Likert format (never, rarely, sometimes, often, most of the time, always), allow for greater range of analyses (e.g., standard regression and structural equation modeling). For analysts who wish to dichotomize the variable into low and

7 7 high for ease of interpretation, the use of an even-numbered scale (6-points), will facilitate this. ANES s sample size will allow for ample power for examining the relative influence of the proposed emotions in predicting preferences, voting intentions, and voting behavior. It should be noted that the existing (through 2004, and presumably continuing) ANES questions on voter emotional responses to candidates request only a binary choice (yes or no) response. This response format makes more sense for a question about the respondent s feelings, where for most people memories of experiencing particular emotions in reaction to a candidate are likely to be few. However, with the quasi-continuous response scale in the proposed questions, analyses can be conducted that not only investigate the differential effect of certain emotions and combinations of emotions, but also the effect of perceived frequency and variability in emotion. For example, those who are perceived as expressing any or all emotions frequently may be judged differently, being perceived as overly emotional. Additionally, it may be that candidates who are seen as having a tendency to express relatively few emotions are judged differently than those who are more varied in their emotionality. In this vein, gender and ethnic stereotypes of emotionality can be explored, as well as any mediating or moderating effects they may have on the emotionality-candidate preference relation, or vice versa. Evidence that the proposed way of asking the questions yields better data than obvious alternate ways of asking the same questions. The proposed question format and wording is very straightforward. As discussed above, an alternative would be to format the response options as binary, allowing only for responses indicating that a candidate has or has not expressed an emotion, but respondents could easily answer yes to all the emotions with considerable confidence and the data would be far less

8 8 informative than the continuous scale response offered. The use of an even-numbered response scale allows for an easy dichotomization into high or low. Evidence about the empirical performance of such questions. To my knowledge, questions of this sort have not been asked in any studies to date. Studies have manipulated the emotionality of mock candidates (Stroud et al., 2006) and have correlationally assessed physiological and attitudinal responses to candidate emotional displays (e.g., McHugo, Lanzetta, Sullivan, Masters, & Englis, 1985; Sullivan & Masters, 1988). Other studies have looked at the impact of voter affect (e.g., Abelson et al., 1985; Granberg & Brown, 1989). However, candidate emotion has not been assessed systematically in this way. Emotion perception, and meaningful reports thereof, has been fairly well established. Within cultures, emotion perception is quite consistent (Ekman et al., 1987). Typically, emotions research involves asking for judgments of the emotion experienced by a person presented in an illustration or photograph. This proposal recommends asking respondents for retrospective assessments about the frequency of various emotional displays by known persons and, to my knowledge is in that sense unprecedented. However, because accurate (or at least high consensus) perception of emotional displays has been demonstrated, and respondents typically have no trouble labeling perceived emotions (with the exception of contempt, which is often mistaken for disgust), this approach seems reasonable. References Abelson, Robert P., Kinder, Donald R., Peters, Mark D., & Fiske, Susan T. (1982). Affective and semantic components in political person perception. Journal of Personality and

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