ROLE OF ANXIETY IN RADICALIZING POLITICAL ATTITUDES: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM SLOVAKIA

• Authors: Baboš Pavol , Világi Aneta , Soláriková Petra
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Proliferation of populist policies and strengthening of political populism in several liberal democracies has been accompanied by campaigns full of public anger, anxiety and fear. Our research contributes to understanding how negative emotions shape selected political attitudes. We designed an experiment with 72 participants randomly assigned to three groups. The aim was to impose anxiety by using a stimulus that is incidental, i.e. having unrelated content to the attitudes under study. In addition to self-reported emotional state measured by post-test survey, we also measured the heart rate activity. Regarding political attitudes, next to attitudes towards immigrants we measured attitudes towards marijuana decriminalization as well. Findings indicate that while imposed anxiety leads to more negative attitudes towards immigrants, there seems to be no such effect on attitudes towards marijuana. We explain the difference by presence/absence of the in-group/out-group division in the types of political attitudes under study.

Keywords

EN

ANXIETY; IMMIGRATION; SLOVAKIA

• Publisher: Institute of Experimental Psychology, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Studia Psychologica
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 61
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 42 – 55

Contributors

author

Baboš Pavol

• Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovak Republic

author

Világi Aneta

author

Soláriková Petra

Identifiers

DOI

10.21909/sp.2019.01.771