Contempt of Congress: Do Liberals and Conservatives Harbor Equivalent Negative Emotional Biases Towards Ideologically Congruent vs. Incongruent Politicians at the Level of Individual Emotions?

Abstract

Prior research suggests that conservatives are more fear-motivated, disgust-sensitive, and happy than liberals. Yet when it comes to political targets (e.g., politicians), both liberals and conservatives can get very emotional. We examined whether the ideological differences in emotion seen in past research apply to emotions towards specific ideologically similar vs. dissimilar targets, or whether these emotions are instead equivalent between liberals and conservatives. Across two studies, liberals and conservatives rated their anger, contempt, disgust, fear, and happiness towards Democratic and Republican congresspersons. We compared participants’ levels of each emotion towards their respective ideologically dissimilar and ideologically similar congresspersons. Liberals and conservatives both experienced stronger negative emotions towards ideologically dissimilar congresspersons than they did towards ideologically similar ones. Neither liberals nor conservatives differed in negative emotions towards politicians overall (i.e., on average). However, there were ideological differences in emotional bias. In Study 1, liberals exhibited a greater contempt bias (i.e., a larger gap in contempt ratings between ideologically similar and ideologically dissimilar politicians) than conservatives did. In Study 2, liberals exhibited greater contempt, anger, disgust, and happiness biases than conservatives did. The need to consider context in the study of ideological differences in emotion is discussed.

Abstract

Background

The combination of politics and emotion can bring out the worst in people. Arguments and clashes between political opposites can quickly become heated, leading to the experience and expression of intense negative emotions towards ideological opponents – especially towards politicians representing the opposing side. It is tempting for both liberals and conservatives to believe that those on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum have greater hostile emotional biases, and are nastier, more hateful, and more spiteful towards opposing-ideology politicians. But does one side objectively harbor greater negative emotional bias towards opposing-ideology politicians than the other?

Why was this study done?

A large and robust body of research in political psychology suggests conservatives are more fear-motivated and disgust-prone than liberals. This body of work might suggest that conservatives could indeed harbor more emotional negativity towards opposing-ideology politicians than liberals do – particularly in regard to fear and disgust. Yet politicians elicit intense negative and positive emotions in both liberals and conservatives. We wanted to investigate whether one side of the ideological spectrum harbors greater hostile emotional biases towards their opposing-ideology politicians than the other; or whether both sides of the ideological spectrum are “just as bad as the other” when it comes to negative emotional biases towards opposing-ideology politicians, in spite of the well-documented ideological differences in fear and disgust. Some initial scholarship has shown that when it comes to generalized negativity (i.e., unfavorable feelings), liberals and conservatives tend to have equal levels of emotional negativity towards their respective political opponents. However, no studies had yet fully examined this question at the level of specific discrete emotions, particularly in regard to both fear and disgust, but also regarding the politically toxic emotion of contempt.

What did the researchers do and find?

Across two studies, liberals and conservatives rated their levels of anger, contempt, disgust, fear, and happiness towards Democratic and Republican congresspersons. We compared their levels of each emotion towards their respective ideologically dissimilar and ideologically similar congresspersons. As expected, in both studies we found that liberals and conservatives experienced greater magnitudes of negative emotion towards ideologically dissimilar congresspersons than they did towards ideologically similar congresspersons. In both studies, we also found that liberals and conservatives did not differ in their overall levels of negative emotion towards politicians in general (i.e., the average of their emotion ratings towards ideologically-opposed and ideologically-aligned congresspersons). However, contrary to prior research, we found ideological differences in emotional bias. In Study 1, liberal participants had a greater degree of contempt bias (i.e., a larger gap between contempt ratings toward ideologically-opposed and contempt ratings toward ideologically-aligned congresspersons) than conservatives did. In Study 2, liberal participants had a greater degree of anger, contempt, disgust, and happiness bias than conservatives did.

What do these findings mean?

Although there are well-documented findings suggesting that conservatives are more prone to experiencing fear, disgust, and happiness than liberals are, these ideological differences in emotion did not come into play in the context of emotions towards ideologically dissimilar versus ideologically similar politicians. These findings suggest that emotions towards politicians may represent a special case that overrides these general ideological differences in emotion. Surprisingly however, our findings also indicated that liberals might have greater overall negative emotional biases towards politicians who are ideologically dissimilar, and that this difference may be especially pronounced regarding contempt. This finding may be a function of political power dynamics (greater emotional bias towards those who controlled congress at the time), or may reflect an ideological difference in emotion that has yet to be revealed—a liberal orientation towards contempt.