Using Emotions to Reinforce One’s Ideology: A Study on the Motivated Regulation of Anger

Previous research has shown that people are motivated to up-regulate certain emotions if they believe that it reinforces their ideological convictions. More specifically, Pliskin and colleagues reported that leftists were more likely to experience hope, and rightists were more likely to experience fear if they believed that the respective emotions reinforce their ideology in regard to the acceptance or rejection of social change. The present research expands on these findings by investigating whether people would be motivated to up-regulate their level of anger if they believe it reinforces their ideology, and whether such motivational effort differs between ideological groups (left vs right). To this end, we sampled 206 British participants (114 female, 90 male, 2 other, Mage = 33.18, SD = 11.96) of which 115 (40 male, 73 female, 2 self-identified; Mage = 29.15, SD = 9.9) reported a leftist ideology and 91 (41 female, Mage = 38.29, SD = 12.43) a rightist ideology. Both groups were...Show morePrevious research has shown that people are motivated to up-regulate certain emotions if they believe that it reinforces their ideological convictions. More specifically, Pliskin and colleagues reported that leftists were more likely to experience hope, and rightists were more likely to experience fear if they believed that the respective emotions reinforce their ideology in regard to the acceptance or rejection of social change. The present research expands on these findings by investigating whether people would be motivated to up-regulate their level of anger if they believe it reinforces their ideology, and whether such motivational effort differs between ideological groups (left vs right). To this end, we sampled 206 British participants (114 female, 90 male, 2 other, Mage = 33.18, SD = 11.96) of which 115 (40 male, 73 female, 2 self-identified; Mage = 29.15, SD = 9.9) reported a leftist ideology and 91 (41 female, Mage = 38.29, SD = 12.43) a rightist ideology. Both groups were presented with one of three bogus scientific articles claiming that anger reinforces a leftist ideology, anger reinforces a rightist ideology or a neutral control article. Subsequently, the participants were asked to rank order eight headlines that hinted at emotion-inducing articles (anger, fear, hope, neutral). The results of the ANCOVA revealed a non-significant interaction effect, disconfirming our formulated hypothesis. Such null findings may support the context-dependence of anger and point at the necessity of adopting a multi-dimensional, context sensitive approach to the study of ideological differences in the motivated regulation of emotions.Show less

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Using Emotions to Reinforce One’s Ideology: A Study on the Motivated Regulation of Anger