The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, London, UK.
Sciences Po, CEVIPOF, CNRS, Paris, France.
Sci Rep. 2022 Jul 11;12(1):11766. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-15765-8.
Past research has shown that anger is associated with support for confrontational and punitive responses during crises, and notably with the endorsement of authoritarian ideologies. One important question is whether it is anger generated specifically in a political context that explains the association between anger and specific political preferences or whether any feeling of anger would be associated with changes in political attitudes. Here, we tested the effect of non-politically motivated incidental anger on the preference for strong leaders. In line with past research, we predicted that anger would increase preferences for strong leaders. Across two experiments, we exposed participants to an anger induction task. Before and after this experimental manipulation, we measured participants' political leader preferences by asking them to choose between the faces of two leaders they would vote for in a hypothetical election. The level of self-reported anger predicted the probability of choosing more dominant-looking and less trustworthy-looking leaders after the induction, suggesting that even non-political incidental anger increases preferences for strong leaders.
过去的研究表明，愤怒与危机期间对抗和惩罚性反应的支持有关，特别是与威权主义意识形态的认可有关。一个重要的问题是，是否是在政治环境中产生的特定愤怒解释了愤怒与特定政治偏好之间的联系，还是任何愤怒的感觉都会与政治态度的变化有关。在这里，我们测试了非政治动机的偶然愤怒对强烈领导人偏好的影响。根据过去的研究，我们预测愤怒会增加对强势领导人的偏好。在两项实验中，我们让参与者参与愤怒诱发任务。在这个实验操作之前和之后，我们通过要求他们在假设的选举中从两位领导人的面孔中选择他们将投票给的领导人来衡量参与者的政治领导人偏好。自我报告的愤怒程度预测了诱导后的选择更具支配力和更不值得信任的领导人的概率，这表明即使是非政治的偶然愤怒也会增加对强势领导人的偏好。
