Politics in the past few years has been dominated by fear. Populist groups around the world have propagated a fear of migrants or refugees, a fear that ‘unelected elites’ are divvying up society for their own ends.
A recent study from the University of Buffalo delved into this issue to see if conservatives and liberals process information in the same way. The topical Petri dish the researchers used was climate change, and the study found that conservatives and liberals not only processed climate-related information differently, but also acted differently afterwards.
The authors believe that their findings highlight how political communication can have very unintended consequences. What’s more, this applies to the press as well as for politicians themselves.
“In climate change coverage, I think journalists often use language or images that have emotional implications, like the lonely polar bear floating on ice, which could elicit different responses for different people,” the authors say. “But if we’re able to talk about these issues with the emotional component in mind, then we’re more likely to get people to move toward collective action.”
Risk perception
Elections aren’t commonly thought of as a risk topic, but recent campaigns have had a heavy emphasis on emotional narratives, and so the researchers wanted to examine whether people viewed the outcomes of these campaigns as potential risks, and if so, what impact the emotional responses to risk have on our political choices.
The team used the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model, which aims to help us understand the kind of things that contribute to information seeking and processing. The premise of the model is that risk perception has both cognitive and emotional elements, with neither more important than the other.
Data was collected from a couple of surveys in the run up to the election. The first survey focused solely on the election itself, whilst the second quizzed participants on climate change.
The results showed that emotions do different things depending on the context. For instance, in the election context, conservative voters who sensed fear about the election responded by seeking a high level of information. If fear was felt by liberals in relation to climate change, they tended to process information very carefully.
When anger was the overriding emotion however, things changed, as the impact was not as profound. The exception was when liberals were angry about climate change, as they then reported higher perceived knowledge on the topic.
“Fear and anger had very different influences on information-processing strategies,” the authors conclude. “These emotions also drive conservatives and liberals in distinctive ways.”
