The present study challenges the image of pessimism associated with modernist poetry. By exploring the poetry of T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and Ezra Pound using Ernst Bloch’s principle of hope, it...Show moreThe present study challenges the image of pessimism associated with modernist poetry. By exploring the poetry of T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and Ezra Pound using Ernst Bloch’s principle of hope, it becomes apparent how, for all three poets as well as for Bloch, language is bestowed with a foundational faith. Hope manifests itself in a desire to overcome the waste land’s teleological void in Eliot, to come to terms with the totalitarian inescapability of death in Yeats, and, in Pound, to articulate absolute essence.Show less
Can people be motivated to experience an emotion solely due to the belief that this emotion reinforces their ideology? This study investigated whether people would be motivated to experience...Show moreCan people be motivated to experience an emotion solely due to the belief that this emotion reinforces their ideology? This study investigated whether people would be motivated to experience ideology-congruent and -incongruent emotions, if they believed these would reinforce their (left or right) ideology. A repeated-measures design showed that across ideologies, people were more motivated to experience fear when they believed it was ideology-reinforcing than when they had no such belief. Contrary to the hypothesis, for hope, the data suggested motivation to be high regardless of people’s beliefs about its usefulness for their ideology. This study also investigated potential differences between leftists and rightists in their motivation to experience ideology congruent and incongruent emotions. Whilst the data suggested rightists to be generally more motivated to experience both hope and fear, these results had to be disregarded, due to a great gender and age difference between the samples of the leftist and rightist supporters, which influenced the results. The significance and implications of the current findings are discussed.Show less
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...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
Recent research has shown that even in non-political contexts, leftists and rightists are motivated to experience hope and fear respectively, because of their belief that these emotions justify...Show moreRecent research has shown that even in non-political contexts, leftists and rightists are motivated to experience hope and fear respectively, because of their belief that these emotions justify their ideological convictions. This raises the question of whether the desire to reinforce one’s ideology could also influence the motivation to experience other emotions. In order to fill this gap in the research literature, the present study investigates whether believing that anger reinforces rightist (or leftist) ideology, would motivate people holding on to this ideology to feel more anger in response to politically neutral major current events. To test this, we conducted an online study with 235 adult participants from the United Kingdom, presenting them with (fabricated) scientific information stating that anger can promote and justify the principles of rightist (or leftist) ideology. Next, we assessed if this manipulation influenced participants motivation to experience anger, by measuring the order in which participants prioritized reading anger inducing news, as opposed to hope and fear inducing news, during the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our results indicate that manipulating the belief that anger reinforces one’s (or the opposite) ideology did not influence participants’ motivation to experience anger in this context. Also, contrary to the findings of previous research, leftists and rightists did not differ in their motivation to experience hope and fear. This thesis discusses the implications of these findings, and puts them into context with the world pandemic. Moreover, it proposes future directions for the study of ideological motivated emotion regulation.Show less
