Rally effects, threat, and attitude change: An integrative approach to understanding the role of emotion.

Abstract

Rally 'round the flag effects (J. E. Mueller, 1970) represent sudden and dramatically powerful situation-specific shifts in attitudes toward the American president. However, the extant literature has yet to fully clarify the nature of the psychological dynamics associated with this effect. These ambiguities reflect fundamental differences of opinion among scholars on some very basic questions such as whether overtly experienced emotion should mediate these attitudinal shifts or whether these changes reflect more general shifts in conservative ideology. Across 4 experiments, the authors sought to gain greater clarity on these and other important matters using a multimethod approach in which the authors varied whether participants viewed documentary footage of the 9/11 attacks (Experiments 1-2), generated autobiographical memories of that event (Experiment 3), or retrieved nonpolitical memories from their past (Experiment 4). The authors discuss the relevance of the present findings for theory and research across a variety of different theoretical and methodological paradigms, including social psychological models of threat, emotional appraisal models, and the political science literature.

Affective Politics after 9/11

“…The Bush administration's efforts sought to invoke and channel the affective salience of 9/11 and play up ongoing fears; they also worked to appeal to and redirect lingering moral 124. Lambert et al 2010. 125.…”

Approaching Relief: Compensatory Ideals Relieve Threat-Induced Anxiety by Promoting Approach-Motivated States

“…Anger and power are closely linked to approach motivation (Carver & Harmon-Jones, 2009;Keltner et al, 2003), and so ideologies that wield them should be more able to activate approach motivation. Indeed, moral outrage and worldview defensive reactions to threats are often mediated by anger (Lambert et al, 2010;Mullen & Skitka, 2006). In sum, although one can be reactively extreme for either liberal or conservative ideals, conservatism may be more appealing and conducive to sustaining approach motivation because it is more idealistic, consistent, and comfortable exercising power and aggression.…”

An Exploration of the Differential Effects of Parents' Authoritarianism Dimensions on Pre-school Children's Epistemic, Existential, and Relational Needs

“…As far as existential fear is concerned, a line of research suggests that death anxiety tends to be associated with political conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism and system justifying beliefs (Wilson, 1973; Jost et al, 2003, 2007; Hennes et al, 2012). Experimental studies also showed that manipulations of mortality salience (e.g., Landau et al, 2004; Cohen et al, 2005; Nail et al, 2009) and terrorism salience (Ullrich and Cohrs, 2007) tend to shift people's political opinions and preferences toward conservatism (but see also Kosloff et al, 2010; Lambert et al, 2010 for different results). Besides fear, disgust is also associated to political ideology.…”