Abstract
It seems self-evident that political figures arouse passion and emotion in the electorate. Vivid examples can be found throughout all of political history. In 1864, Harper’s Weekly described Abraham Lincoln as a “monster”, a characterization that is clearly emotionally evocative (Jamieson, 1992). John F. Kennedy, the “Camelot” president, evoked feelings of tremendous pride and patriotism in his eloquent speeches (e.g., “Ask not what your country can do for you…”). Bill Clinton’s recent sexual escapades elicited disgust among many citizens, and his subsequent lies about the affair aroused considerable anger. Moreover, political candidates notoriously surround themselves with contextual stimuli (e.g., the American flag, balloons, music) that are designed to elicit positive emotional reactions in the electorate ([Jamieson, 1992]).
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Abelson, R. R, 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.
Arnold, M. B. (1960). Emotions and personality (Vol. I and II). New York: Columbia University Press.
Baron, R. A. (1997). The sweet smell of… helping: Effects of pleasant ambient fragrances on prosocial behavior in shopping malls. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 498–503.
Bless, H., Bohner, G., Schwarz, N., & Strack, F. (1990). Mood and persuasion: A cognitive response analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 16, 331–345.
Bless, H., Clore, G. L., Schwarz, N., Golisano, V., Rabe, C, & Wolk, M. (1996). Mood and the use of scripts: Does a happy mood really lead to mindlessness? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 665–679.
Bless, H., Mackie, D. M., & Schwarz, N. (1992). Mood effects on encoding and judgmental processes in persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 585–595.
Bless, H., Schwarz, N., & Wieland, R. (1996). Mood and the impact of category membership and individuating information. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 935–959.
Bodenhausen, G. V., Kramer, G. P., & Susser, K. (1994). Happiness and stereotyping thinking in social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 621–632.
Bower, G. H., Gilligan, S. G., & Montiero, K. P. (1981). Selectivity of learning caused by affective states. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 110, 451–473.
Campbell, A., Converse, P. E., Miller, W. E., & Stokes, D. E. (1960). The American voter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Campbell, A., Gurin, G., & Miller, W. E., (1954). The voter decides. Evanston: Row, Peterson.
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.
Clore, G. L., Schwarz, N., & Conway, M. (1994). Affective causes and consequences of social information processing. In R. S. Wyer & T. K. Srull (Eds). Handbook of social cognition (Vol. 2, pp. 323–417). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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.
Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper & Row.
Eagly, A. H. & Chaiken, S. (1993). The psychology of attitudes. New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich College Publishers.
Ehrlichman, H. & Halpern, J. N. (1988). Affect and memory: Effects of pleasant and unpleasant odors on retrieval of happy and unhappy memories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 769–779.
Fazio, R. H. (1989). On the power and functionality of attitudes: The role of accessibility. In A. R. Pratkanis, S. J. Breckler, & A. G. Greenwald (Eds.), Attitude structure and function (pp. 153–179). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Fishbein, M. & Ajzen, I. (1975). Belief attitude, intention, and behavior. Philippines: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Glaser, J. & Salovey, P. (1998). Affect in electoral politics. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2, 156–172.
Granberg, D. & Brown, T. A. (1989). On affect and cognition in politics. Social Psychology Quarterly, 52, 171–182.
Hibbing, J. R. & Theiss-Morse, E. (1998). The media’s role in public negativity toward congress: Distinguishing emotional reactions and cognitive evaluations. American Journal of Political Science, 42, 475–498.
Isbell, L. M. (1999). Beyond heuristic information processing: Systematic processing in happy and sad moods. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Isbell, L. M. & Clore, G. L. (1994). [The effects of odor on political judgment]. Unpublished raw data.
Isbell, L. M. & Wyer, R. S. (1999). Correcting for mood-induced bias in the evaluations of political candidates: The roles of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 237–249.
Isen, A. M. (1987). Positive affect, cognitive processes, and social behavior. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.) Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 20, pp. 203–353). San Diego: CA: Academic Press.
Isen, A. M., Shalker, T. E., Clark, M., & Karp, L. (1978). Affect, accessibility of materials in memory, and behavior: A cognitive loop? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 1–12.
Jamieson, K. H. (1992). Dirty politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lazarsfeld, P. F, Berelson, B. R., & Gaudet, H. (1944). The People’s choice: How the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce.
Lazarus, R. S. (1984). On the primacy of cognition. American Psychologist, 39, 124–129.
Mackie, D. M. & Worth, L. T. (1989). Processing deficits and the mediation of positive affect in persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 27–40.
Marcus, G. E. (1988). The structure of emotional response: 1984 presidential candidates. American Political Science Review, 82, 737–761.
Marcus, G. E. (2000). Emotions in politics. Annual Review of Political Science, 3, 221–250.
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.
Marcus, G. E., Neuman, W. R., & MacKuen, M. (2000). Affective intelligence and political judgment. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Marcus, G. E., Neuman, W. R., MacKuen, M., & Sullivan, J. L. (1996). Dynamic models of emotional response: The multiples roles of affect in politics. Research in Micropolitics, 5, 33–59.
Martin, L. L., Seta, J. J., & Crelia, R. A. (1990). Assimilation and contrast as a function of people’s willingness and ability to expend effort in forming an impression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 27–37.
Murphy, S. T, Monahan, J. L., & Zajonc, R. B. (1995). Additivity of nonconscious affect: Combined effects of priming and exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 589–602.
Nadeau, R., Niemi, R. G., & Amato, T. (1995). Emotions, issue importance, and political learning. American Journal of Political Science, 39, 558–574.
Nisbett, R. E. & Wilson, T. W. (1977). Telling more than we know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231–259.
Ortony, A., Clore, G., & Collins, A. (1988). The cognitive structure of emotion. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Ottati, V. (1997). When the survey question directs retrieval: Implications for assessing the cognitive and affective predictors of global evaluation. European Journal of Social Psychology, 27, 1–21.
Ottati, V. (2001). The psychological determinants of political judgment. In A. Tesser & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Intraindividual Processes (615–634), Oxford: Blackwell.
Ottati, V. & Isbell, L. M. (1996). Effects of mood during exposure to target information on subsequently reported judgments: An on-line model of misattribution and correction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 39–53.
Ottati, V., Steenbergen, M., & Riggle, E. (1992). The cognitive and affective components of political attitudes. Measuring the determinants of candidate evaluations. Political Behavior, 14, 423–142.
Ottati, V. & Wyer, R. S., Jr. (1990). The cognitive mediators of political choice: Toward a comprehensive model of political information processing. In J. A. Ferejohn & J. H. Kuklinski (Eds.), Information and Democratic Process (pp. 186–216).Urbana, Il: University of Illinois Press.
Ottati, V. & 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.
Ragsdale, L. (1991). Strong feelings: Emotional responses to presidents. Political Behavior, 13, 33–65.
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.
Scherer, K. R. (1993). Studying the emotion-antecedent appraisal process: An expert system approach. Cognition and Emotion, 7, 325–355.
Schwarz, N. (1990). Feelings as information: Informative and motivational functions of affective states. In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (Vol. 2, pp. 527–561). New York: Guilford Press.
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.
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.
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.
Schwarz, N. & Clore, G. L. (1988). How do I feel about it? Informative functions of affective states. In K. Fiedler & J. Forgas (Eds.), Affect, cognition, and social behavior (pp. 44–62). Toronto, Canada: Hofgrefe International.
Schwarz, N. & Clore, G. L. (1996). Feelings and phenomenal experiences. In E. T. Higgins &A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.) Social psychology handbook of principles (pp. 433–465). New York: Guilford Press.
Srull, T. K. & Wyer, R. S. (1989). Person memory and judgment. Psychological Review, 96, 58–83.
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.
Wegener, D. T. & Petty, R. E. (1995). Flexible correction processes in social judgment: The role of naïve theories in corrections for perceived bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 36–51.
Wegener, D. T. & Petty, R. E. (1997). The flexible correction model: The role of naive theories of bias in bias correction. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 29, pp. 141–208). San Diego, CA: Academic.
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.
Worth, L. T. & Mackie, D. M. (1987). Cognitive mediation of positive affect in persuasion. Social Cognition, 5, 76–94.
Wyer, R. S., Clore, G. L., & Isbell, L. M. (1999). Affect and information processing. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 31, pp. 1–77). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Wyer, R. S., Clore, G. L., & Isbell, L. M. (2000). What accounts for the relation between affect and memory? Unpublished manuscript.
Wyer, R. S. & Srull, T. K. (1989). Memory and cognition in its social context. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Zajonc, R. B. (1980). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35, 151–175.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Isbell, L.M., Ottati, V.C. (2002). The Emotional Voter. In: Ottati, V.C., et al. The Social Psychology of Politics. Social Psychological Applications to Social Issues. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0569-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0569-3_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-5136-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-0569-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive