Emotion Regulation as the Foundation of Political Attitudes: Does Reappraisal Decrease Support for Conservative Policies?

Abstract

Cognitive scientists, behavior geneticists, and political scientists have identified several ways in which emotions influence political attitudes, and psychologists have shown that emotion regulation can have an important causal effect on physiology, cognition, and subjective experience. However, no work to date explores the possibility that emotion regulation may shape political ideology and attitudes toward policies. Here, we conduct four studies that investigate the role of a particular emotion regulation strategy – reappraisal in particular. Two observational studies show that individual differences in emotion regulation styles predict variation in political orientations and support for conservative policies. In the third study, we experimentally induce disgust as the target emotion to be regulated and show that use of reappraisal reduces the experience of disgust, thereby decreasing moral concerns associated with conservatism. In the final experimental study, we show that use of reappraisal successfully attenuates the relationship between trait-level disgust sensitivity and support for conservative policies. Our findings provide the first evidence of a critical link between emotion regulation and political attitudes.

How Disgust Influences Health Purity Attitudes

“…11 Subjects were randomly assigned to treatment (n = 118) and control (n = 97) conditions using Qualtrics survey software. respondents disgust-eliciting pictures (e.g., Lee et al 2013;Schnall et al 2008). 12 To provide a cover story, subjects were asked to imagine touching the object in the picture, then to rate the object on a variety of adjectives, such as soft, slimy, sticky, and rough.…”

Moral foundations vignettes: a standardized stimulus database of scenarios based on moral foundations theory

“…Some researchers have used the MFQ as a dependent variable (Lee, Sohn, & Fowler, 2013; Napier & Luguri, 2013; Wright & Baril, 2011), but it’s unclear how these relationships would translate to moral judgment. Notably, some of these authors even refer to the MFQ as a measure of “moral judgment,” highlighting the need for such a measure (Lee, Sohn, & Fowler, 2013).…”

“…Notably, some of these authors even refer to the MFQ as a measure of “moral judgment,” highlighting the need for such a measure (Lee, Sohn, & Fowler, 2013). Moreover, neither the MFQ nor MFSS is ideally suited for techniques measuring neural activity.…”

Emotions in Conflict

“…Research into direct forms of emotion regulation has recently begun applying this construct to intergroup conflicts and the group-based emotions that emerge in their wake Halperin, Porat, Tamir, & Gross, 2013;Lee, Sohn, & Fowler, 2013). By now, most of the studies along these lines have focused on cognitive reappraisal, although recent correlational studies in the context of prejudice against Muslims in the US utilized other emotion regulation strategies, such as rumination (Steele, Parker, & Lickel, 2015).…”

“…This is especially important given the results of recent studies by Lee et al (2013) demonstrating that individual differences in emotion regulation styles (and particularly in reappraisal) predict variation in political orientations and support for conservative policies. A nationwide survey of Jewish Israelis was sampled to test whether individual differences in the use of reappraisal were associated with conciliatory political reactions during war.…”