Are leftists more emotion-driven than rightists? The interactive influence of ideology and emotions on support for policies.
Although emotions and ideology are important factors guiding policy support in conflict, their interactive influence remains unclear. Based on prior findings that ideological leftists' beliefs are more susceptible to change than rightists' beliefs, we tested a somewhat counterintuitive extension that leftists would be more susceptible to influence by their emotional reactions than rightists. In three laboratory studies, inducing positive and negative emotions affected Jewish-Israeli leftists', but not rightists', support for conciliatory policies toward an adversarial (Studies 1 and 3) and a non-adversarial (Study 2) outgroup. Three additional field studies showed that positive and negative emotions were related to leftists', but not rightists', policy support in positive as well as highly negative conflict-related contexts, among both Jewish (Studies 4 and 5) and Palestinian (Study 6) citizens of Israel. Across different conflicts, emotions, conflict-related contexts, and even populations, leftists' policy support changed in accordance with emotional reactions more than rightists' policy support.
Tel Aviv University, Israel Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Israel.
Ruthie
R
Pliskin
Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Daniel
D
Bar-Tal
Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Gal
G
Sheppes
Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Israel eran.halperin@idc.ac.il.
Eran
E
Halperin
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003469:Culture; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D007585:Jews; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011057:Politics; D055815:Young Adult
conflict; emotion; ideology; intergroup processes; political psychology