In Anger We Trust: Does the Belief that Anger Reinforces One’s Ideology, Motivate  One to Experience Anger?

Researchers have tried to link the motivation to experience certain emotions to specific ideologies. Recently there has been more support for taking context into account when studying the influence of ideology on the motivation to experience an emotion. One of these contextual factors is the belief that an emotion can reinforce one’s ideology. Therefore, this study investigated whether the belief that anger reinforces one’s ideology motivates one to experience anger. Additionally, we tested whether leftists are more motivated to experience hope than rightists and whether rightists are more motivated to experience fear than leftists. The belief that anger reinforces one’s ideology was induced by reading a scientific article about anger and ideology. To test if participants were then more motivated to experience an emotion, participants created a ranking of their preference for reading anger, hope, fear and no emotion inducing articles. We found that reading an article that states...Show moreResearchers have tried to link the motivation to experience certain emotions to specific ideologies. Recently there has been more support for taking context into account when studying the influence of ideology on the motivation to experience an emotion. One of these contextual factors is the belief that an emotion can reinforce one’s ideology. Therefore, this study investigated whether the belief that anger reinforces one’s ideology motivates one to experience anger. Additionally, we tested whether leftists are more motivated to experience hope than rightists and whether rightists are more motivated to experience fear than leftists. The belief that anger reinforces one’s ideology was induced by reading a scientific article about anger and ideology. To test if participants were then more motivated to experience an emotion, participants created a ranking of their preference for reading anger, hope, fear and no emotion inducing articles. We found that reading an article that states that anger reinforces one’s ideology does not motivate one more to experience anger. There was also no evidence that leftists are more motivated to experience hope than rightists or that rightists are more motivated to experience fear than leftists. These results show the difficulty of convincing one that anger reinforces one’s ideology and that one can be hesitant to want to experience anger. The results that hope was not tied to leftists and fear not tied to rightists can be explained by the influence of a state of fear in the participants due to the use of Coronavirus-related stimuli. These findings indicate that future research should also take other contextual factors into account, like one’s current emotional state, when studying the influence of beliefs about emotions on motivated emotion regulation.Show less

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In Anger We Trust: Does the Belief that Anger Reinforces One’s Ideology, Motivate One to Experience Anger?