RAPID: Emotion Regulation, Attitudes, and the Consequences for Political Behavior in a Polarized Political Environment

概述和更广泛的影响民主国家的权力从一个政党到另一个政党的过渡创造了独特的政治环境。 经济、社会或外交政策发生重大变化的前景，有时是意想不到的变化，会在公众中引发激烈的辩论和强烈的情绪。这种不断演变的背景使学者能够评估情绪调节如何塑造政治行为和态度。面对突发事件时的情绪激活可能表现为多种形式：在社交媒体上发帖，参加市政厅会议，联系民选官员，签署请愿书和/或参与社会运动。这些知识有助于解释情绪何时以及为何会推动大规模的政治参与和竞争。该项目产生的数据使研究人员能够评估情绪调节对政治参与影响的理论，即不同类型的情绪调节策略如何导致不同类型的政治行为。 该项目还将为更广泛的社会科学界提供有价值的数据。 特别是，这项研究将产生第一个多波小组调查，跟踪个人的态度和行为如何随着时间的推移而变化，以应对美国政党过渡第一年的政治事件。这项调查是政治学中第一个研究情绪调节习惯如何在社会中因人而异的调查，并考虑随着时间的推移，这些习惯是否会导致更多的共识或更大的两极分化。这项研究利用心理学的既定做法来衡量政治背景下的情绪调节习惯。该项目还培训研究生和本科生机器学习，自动文本编码和开放式调查响应的文本分析。这些正在成为调查研究领域的关键技能，因为与传统调查相比，计算能力为通过更自由的形式，自然主义的回应来了解公众态度提供了新的机会。这项研究有助于越来越多的研究探索社会政治情绪在助长公众态度和行为方面的重要性。我们发展了新的理论来解释个人水平的情绪调节习惯如何a）调节信息的情感处理和B）影响表达和社会政治行为。初步测试表明，与那些使用抑制或回避调节习惯的人相比，善于通过重新评估激发情绪的刺激来调节情绪的人更有可能成为政治活跃分子。重新评估者更有可能将他们的观点传递给他人，从而成为社会传染的来源。该项目采用三波小组调查设计，对情绪调节如何塑造问题参与、政治责任感的变化以及政治参与水平和形式的变化进行更广泛的测试。我们从2016年大选前进行的一项大型在线全国调查的受访者中抽取了小组样本，以获得关于医疗保健，环境，税收改革和军事用途等关键政策主题的选举前基线意见。随后几波的小组研究是在政策变化的关键时刻对受访者进行调查，或者在出现意外的非常事件之后进行调查。该设计允许研究人员观察随着时间的推移，在使用情绪调节习惯的个人水平的变化，并测试是否不同的情绪调节习惯，使个人更容易重新审视自己的信念。如果是这样的话，这些人可能会改变信仰，或者拒绝新信息，保持僵化的态度。这项研究还使研究人员能够研究情绪调节如何影响或阻碍政治活动，以应对社会中情绪激动的时刻。

Overview and Broader ImpactsTransitions of power in democracies from one party to another create unique political contexts. The prospect of substantial and sometimes unexpected changes in economic, social, or foreign policy stimulates heated debate and strong emotions in the public. This evolving context allows for scholars to assess how emotion regulation shapes political behavior and attitudes. The activation of emotion in the face of unexpected events may manifest in a number of forms: posting on social media, attending town hall meetings, contacting elected officials, signing petitions, and/or participating in social movements. This knowledge helps to explain when and why emotions fuel broad-scale political participation and competition. The data generated from this project enables the investigators to assess theories about the influence of emotion regulation on political participation, i.e. how different types of emotion regulation strategies lead to different types of political behavior. The project will also provide valuable data for the social science community more broadly. In particular, the study will produce the first multi-wave panel survey tracking how individual attitudes and behavior change over time in response to political events during the first year of a party transition in the United States. The survey is the first in political science to study how emotion regulation habits vary across individuals in society and considers whether, over time, these habits lead to more consensus or greater polarization. The study utilizes established practices from psychology to measure emotion regulation habits in political contexts. The project also trains graduate and undergraduate students in machine learning, automated text coding, and text-analytics of open-ended survey responses. These are emerging as critical skills in the field of survey research as computing power opens new opportunities for understanding public attitudes through more free-form, naturalistic responses compared to traditional surveys. Scientific MeritThis study contributes to a growing body of research exploring the importance of socio-political emotions in fueling public attitudes and behavior. We develop new theory to explain how individual-level emotion regulation habits a) moderate the affective processing of information and b) influence expressive and social political behavior. Pilot tests indicate individuals adept at regulating their emotions through reappraising emotion-provoking stimuli were more likely to become politically active compared to those who use suppressive or avoidance regulation habits. Reappraisers are more likely to transmit their views to others, thus serving as a source of social contagion. This project uses a three-wave panel survey design to conduct a broader test of how emotion regulation shapes issue engagement, changes in perceptions of political responsibility, and changes in levels and forms of political participation. We draw our panel sample from a pool of respondents to a large online national survey conducted just prior to the 2016 elections to obtain pre-election baseline opinions on key policy topics like healthcare, the environment, tax reform, and military use. Subsequent waves of the panel study are timed to survey respondents during critical moments of policy change, or will follow an unexpected extraordinary event, should one arise. The design permits the investigators to observe individual-level change in the use of emotion regulation habits over time, and to test whether different emotion regulation habits make individuals more prone to reexamine their beliefs. If that is the case, these individuals could potentially change beliefs, or reject new information and maintain rigidity in attitudes. The research also allows the investigators to examine how emotion regulation influences or hinders political activism in response to emotionally provocative moments in society.