It's My Campaign I'll Cry if I Want to: How and When Campaigns Use Emotional Appeals

JOURNAL:  Political Psychology
AUTHORS: Travis N. Ridout, Kathleen Searles
SUMMARY: Recent research in the area of campaign advertising suggests that emotional appeals can influence political attitudes, electoral choices and decision-making processes. Yet is there any evidence that candidates use emotional appeals strategically during campaigns? Is there a pattern to their use? For instance, are fear appeals used primarily late in the campaign by trailing candidates in order to get voters to rethink their choices? And are enthusiasm appeals used more commonly early on in order to shore up a candidate's base? We use affective intelligence theory—and supplement it with the idea of a voter backlash—to generate expectations about when candidates use certain emotional appeals (namely, anger, fear, enthusiasm, and pride) and which types of candidates are most likely to do so. 

CULTURAL REFERENCE: A song by American singer Leslie Gore, which appeared on their 1963 album ​I'll Cry If I Want To.

Scientific paper

Song