It may seem as though the controversy between feeling and thought has only been explored in recent phenomena, but in reality, it has been a hot topic for centuries. Humans have the tendency to use their emotions as a way to argue political agendas, but the real question is if that is the right or wrong way. As Aristotle said, thinking with emotions are a problem that hinders reason and thus the capacity to establish political regimes that are democratic and just. Aristotle saw a constructive integrity between emotion and rationality (Vaes et al., 2011).
In the present study, researchers Vaes, Paladino, & Magagnotti (2011) tested the hypothesis that political slogans that express a uniquely human emotion and that are associated with the campaign of a political candidate who has the same political affiliation as participants (in-group) will induce more conformity reactions than a candidate of the opposing party (out-group) who presents similar kinds of slogans (Vaes et al., 2011). It was found that individuals ascribe less of the uniquely human emotions – or secondary emotions – to the out-group than to the in-group. This outcome is due to an infrahumanization process, which can be described as the tendency for people to perceive individuals in other groups as being somewhat ‘less human’ (Vaes et al., 2011).
For example, in today’s America the left-wing and right-wing coalition – or the Democratic and Republican party – seem to oppose each other in every way possible. A democrat is less likely to agree or feel positive emotion towards a Republican, and vice-versa. The purpose of this experiment is to investigate the emotional political appeal as being a better vote-getting technique than the rational or factual approach. The authors studied this experiment to truly discover the connection between emotion and persuasion (Vaes et al., 2011). Specifically, the role of strategic use of uniquely human emotions in political slogans was investigated.
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There were ninety-one Italian participants in this study. 32 identified themselves as supporters of the right-wing party, 43 with the left-wing, and 16 who declared themselves neither. Their age ranged from 18 to 65 years, with a mean of 28.6 years. Participants were assigned randomly to one of the four conditions of the experimental design: 2 (Group: ingroup vs. outgroup) × 2 (Type of emotion: primary vs. secondary emotions) [ Vaes et al., 2011). Participants were approached in a public library, and volunteered to participate in an experiment that allegedly tested people’s memory for political slogans in relation to their visual capacities. We often only see slogans very shortly, so this study tests the idea that people’s visual capacities moderate their memory for political slogans. The researchers in this study used sampling behavior with task.
The first part of the experiment consisted of the manipulation of the political candidate and slogans. A short, general biography of the political candidate was given. For half of the participants, Andrea Ferrari was introduced as a candidate of the right-wing coalition. The other participants instead were told that this political candidate was part of the left-wing coalition. The first task consisted of reading the political slogans that would appear on the computer screen for 4000 ms and try to memorize them. Participants were informed that all slogans were used in the present campaign of Andrea Ferrari. For half of the participants, the slogans contained clear examples of primary emotions, and the latter expressed typical secondary emotions. In total, 12 slogans appeared in the middle of the screen, of which 6 contained emotions and 6 were neutral and identical in all conditions (Vaes et al., 2011).
During the first task, participants were simultaneously doing the second task. After every slogan, a page with a series of the letter a appeared. On top of the screen, an estimate of the number of letters appeared also. Participants were told that Andrea Ferrari devised these estimates. Each page filled with the letter a remained on the screen for 5000 ms. Within this time, participants had to say out loud how many letters they thought appeared on the screen. Participants were never openly asked to take the estimates of the political candidate into consideration; they were just informed of their presence. This part of the experiment tested subtle conformity (Vaes et al., 2011).
After completion of the task(s), participants filled in a final questionnaire. This included a memory test for the slogans and a series of precise questions evaluating the political candidate and the political slogans. The first set of questions meant to measure the evaluation of the candidate, meaning their responses would tell what they thought about the political candidate by rating the extent to which he was trustworthy, competent, kind and likable. Then, participants had to indicate the degree to which the slogans were convincing and likable. Following that, participants were asked to express their agreement (7) or disagreement (1) with the content of the presented slogans. Finally, when participants were finished with the ratings of the political candidate, they were asked to consider the probability that they would vote for Andrea Ferrari indicating their answer on a scale (Vaes et al., 2011).
Researchers categorized participants either as in-group members indicating the same ideological position as the candidate or out-group members showing that participants and the candidate had opposite ideological positions. Finally, participants were asked to name the political party for whom they had the intention of voting at the upcoming regional elections (Vaes et al., 2011). It was expected that participants would use Andrea Ferrari’s estimates as an anchor for their own judgments according to conditions. Conformity was operationalized as the mean distance between the anchors and the participant’s actual judgments, so that the smaller the distance, the greater the conformity.
When presented with slogans that contained secondary emotions, participants conformed more to Andrea Ferrari when he came from the in-group rather than from the out-group. Instead, when Andrea Ferrari’s political campaign presented slogans that were equal in content but contained primary emotions, no significant differences were found (F < 1). It was especially the in-group candidate that gained from the expression of secondary emotions in his slogans. The distance from the in-group candidate decreased significantly when his political slogans contained secondary emotions compared to when they expressed primary emotions, F (1, 31) = 6.51, p < .05, μ2 = .17. This difference went in the opposite direction but did not emerge significantly for the out-group candidate, F(1, 40) = 1.39, p > .244. The in-group candidate was judged more positively (M = 67.41) than the out-group candidate (M = 50.18). It was shown that overall the use of primary emotions (M = 4.40) in political slogans resulted in a more positive evaluation of the political candidate than the use of secondary emotions (M = 3.86), F(1, 71) = 6.78, p < .05, μ2 = .07.
The three questions that assessed participants’ explicit evaluations of the slogans were averaged into a single, general evaluation index of the political slogans that were presented during the experiment (α = .80). The slogans that were consistent with the ideological orientation of the participants were seen as more convincing, likable and agreeable than those that expressed the opposing ideological position. This outcome showed that participants were more willing to vote for the candidate if he was part of their political in-group than if he was part of the out-group. Even though participants always indicated a more favorable intention to vote for Andrea Ferrari when he was part of their political in-group, the difference between the in-group and the out-group tended to oppose when the political slogans contained secondary emotions (F (1, 28) = 11.35, p < .01, μ2 = .29 and F (1, 26) = 29.05, p < .001, μ2 = .53 for primary and secondary emotions respectively) [Vaes et al., 2011).
The results of this study fall in line with my research question because subtle conformity was recorded after the completion of the tasks and data collection. Even though participants always preferred to vote for the candidate when he belonged to the same party rather than to the opposing, they did this even more when the political slogans expressed secondary emotions. As a consequence, these participants’ identification with one of the two coalitions is likely based on a stable and enduring attachment. Hence, it is likely that these factors somewhat overshadowed the influence of the subtle emotion manipulation on people’s voting intentions (Vaes et al., 2011).
The researchers in this study made a smart choice making the participants believe they were participating in a memory test rather than a study on political conformity. This decreased the risk of a threat to external validity. All trials for participants were randomized by SuperLab software, making the study more reliable. Because this study tested participants and their political affiliation, it could be generalized to the public because most individuals would have had the same results. The only downside was that the sample size was small, so in order to make the results concrete, more of the same study should be done considering this was the first one of its kind. What is interesting about the task use is the un-relatedness to politics. However, the task participants were confronted with was best compared with the common situation in which voters do not have a clear opinion because the policy issue at hand is ambiguous and complex (Vaes et al., 2011). Voters who do not have a clear opinion on policies, etc. have the choice to either conform to the opinion of the politician or to perceive the candidate’s opinion as a counter-argument and take distance from it.
Concluding this study, it can be said that even the slightest conformity is seen throughout everyday politics. Humans have the tendency to use their emotions as a way to argue political agendas, but the real question is if that is the right or wrong way. As Aristotle said, thinking with emotions are a problem that hinders reason and thus the capacity to establish political regimes that are democratic and just. The authors of this study stated that it “would be interesting in future research to try to enlarge this sample in order to verify whether the use of uniquely human emotions in political slogans makes a political candidate more convincing” (Vaes, et al. 2011) for a sample of participants who claim they are not affiliated with a certain political party, but can still be the deciding votes.
