New Treatments for Emotion Induction

• In Event: Innovations in Experimental Design

Abstract

How do emotions shape policy attitudes? Scholars of political behavior have long studied the effect of emotions—particularly negative ones like fear (Young 2019)—on a range of attitudinal outcomes. Methodologists have also investigated how best to induce these emotions in participants (e.g., Searles and Mattes 2015 on anger). Less is known, however, about the induction of positive emotions in experimental contexts, notwithstanding the importance of emotions like reciprocity, gratitude, and compassion for political outcomes. (We see gratitude as especially crucial here, given the importance of gratitude for citizens’ policy attitudes and acceptance of different regime types; see Ringen 2017, Bechtel & Hainmueller 2011, Murdock 2011.) And similarly little is known about inducing emotions in the context of online survey experiments, in which attention spans are short and survey respondent quality is low.
Our project features two experiments. The first experiment fills the gaps in the methodological literature on experimental induction of emotions in contemporary survey research by replicating Searles and Mattes (2015)’s study of the effectiveness of scenario- and image-based lab inductions of anger, in the context of an online survey; extending Searles and Mattes (2015)’s study by testing whether their techniques work for inducing the positive emotion of gratitude; and introducing a new two-step autobiographical emotional memory task for the induction of complex emotions like specifically political gratitude. The second experiment evaluates the effect of gratitude on outcomes including support for redistribution, acceptance of working conditions, and complacency about inequality.

Authors

• Ekin Dursun, Yale University

• Amanda Weiss, Yale University