Your Emotions and Your Politics
Why it’s so important you understand the connection between the way you feel and the way you think
Although emotions guide us all, we rarely trust them in others, particularly when we think they are trying to misguide us.
In a 2015 article for the Guardian, writer Eyal Winter shares a story about his Great Uncle Walter, a Jewish man living in Nazi Germany:
One night in 1933, Walter returned home petrified of what he had just experienced. While walking through town, he had come across a Nazi rally and out of interest took the risk of entering the crowd. As he walked in deeper and the Nazi national anthem began to play, he found himself slowly beginning to join in; although hesitant at first, as time goes on his singing becomes louder and louder. So enthralled was he with the experience, that at the finale of the song Walter even began to yell “Sieg Heil!” along with everyone else.
Once home, Walter started to reconcile what he had just done — what he felt compelled to do — and the reality set in.
Now, why am I passing this story on to you?
Because, in many ways, we are all prone to these same tendencies. That is, to be guided by our feelings when engaging in political acts, even when they might seem irrational or even dangerous.
As a Jew, it didn’t ‘make sense’ for him to participate in this political rally, yet he did anyway.
Now, ask yourself…
Have you ever succumbed to this kind of impulse yourself?
If you are anything like me, the answer will likely be yes.
Especially when it comes to politics, we are all guided heavily by our emotions. Our thinking, our actions, our values. All of these are intrinsically connected — whether we like it or not — to the way we feel. Consciously recognizing how this happens and why we are so hesitant to admit so is vitally important. Otherwise, you too might on occasion be drawn towards a dangerous crowd and pulled into their antics — just as Walter was.
Like it or not, emotions shape our politics
In 2012, a study on Danish citizens presented different groups with news articles about the ongoing refugee crisis. The researchers found they were able to direct their participant’s emotions by presenting them with altered news titles. With each discussing the same story, feelings of ‘sadness’ and ‘anger’ could be induced by focusing on different actors— like an older man versus a younger girl — or different trigger words. After reading these articles, different groups expressed higher degrees of ‘sadness’ or ‘anger’ towards the crisis as a whole, depending on which article they read.
4 years earlier a different study had been conducted during another politically polarizing event: the 2008 US Presidential Election.
Conducted on American voters, researchers measured to what extent their political views would be impacted by the symbols they saw. After showing groups of adults a number of images and then surveying them on their political beliefs, it was found that,
“even a single exposure to an American flag resulted in a significant increase in participants’ Republican voting intentions, voting behavior, political beliefs, and implicit and explicit attitudes.”
Even when participants told the researchers that they did not believe their values would be affected, the opposite was shown to be true.
Now, two interesting observations were made during these studies:
- That we can successfully shift people’s political beliefs by guiding their emotions.
- That the participants did not believe this conclusion would occur.
Very often we try to convince ourselves that politics as a whole, and our politics in particular, are based on rationale and logic, not our feelings. Moreover, often times when emotions are brought up in political debates, they are seen as suspect.
British Comedian and political commentator Russell Brand spoke about this in his podcast, Under The Skin, where he reviewed footage of the British Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock ‘crying’ — or at least pretending to — when announcing that the COVID vaccine will soon be available in the UK. What was so interesting about this clip is it shows just how rare it is to see politicians visibly show their emotions, as well as our skepticism of when they do. It seems that although emotions guide us all, we rarely trust them in others, particularly when we think they are trying to misguide us.
Our mistrust for emotions in politics
I believe this mistrust demonstrates that we are in fact consciously aware of how much emotions can be used to guide our thinking, albeit an awareness that is somewhat selectively utilized — this is evident in the fact that politicians were ranked as the 2nd least trusted profession by the British public, coming runner up to perhaps the only profession that manipulates emotions even more: Marketing Executives.
As well as being seen as potentially manipulative, emotions can also be seen as opposing what politics is ‘supposed’ to be about. Emotional appeals and arguments are often rejected in political debates, seen as undermining the proper nature of political discourse, which should be rational and logical. The all-too-common phrase “facts don’t care about your feelings,” is commonly used in this regard. While emotions are an intrinsic part of our politics, we don’t like it when they are used against us — or, at least, when we think they are used disingenuously.
But what about when we use them ourselves?
Emotions and politics, where do ‘you’ lie?
Many of us are aware emotions play an important role in our thinking, but it’s still important to question the degree to which they shape our politics specifically. Not because emotions are ‘bad’ or that their influence on our thinking should be suppressed where ever possible, far from it. We should simply be conscious of how much they affect us individually, so that we can better understand how our political decision making works — and by extension, how it works in others as well.
To summarize this point, I like this comment made by Professor Peter Dittobrief at UC Irvine:
“People think that they think like scientists… But really they think like lawyers. Scientists don’t care what the answer is: they look at the data and draw a conclusion. Lawyers know the conclusion they want to reach, then they harness a bunch of facts to support that conclusion.”
So, are you a Lawyer, or a Scientist? Probably both, depending on the situation, but you should at least know when you are behaving like one or the other.
With emotions in politics, awareness is key
Now let’s apply this quote to the context of the article: shaping our political beliefs. People already know how they feel about a given political issue. Then, having established their stance, they find the facts that validate their feelings.
Is this always a bad way of shaping your political beliefs? Not necessarily, your ‘gut feeling’ isn’t always wrong after all. But this can be a worrying modus operandi if we aren’t conscious of how important our emotions really are. When we reject this reality, we set ourselves up to make troubling logical arguments or accept evidence we know deep down is not adequate. From there, we can become conditioned to reject reality and embrace dangerous ideas that support our current stance: sound like something you’ve heard before?
But as I said, emotions in politics are not always bad. Beyond being an intrinsic part of the human experience that needs to be respected when deciding how our society will be managed, they can also serve as a tool to further reasoned thinking, not just stunt it.
To cite one final study led by Jennifer Lerner of Harvard University, we can see that emotions don’t always encourage the type of superficial thinking that we might often fear. Instead, they can be powerful motivators for deep insight and self-reflection. Drawing a quote from one of her conclusions:
Emotions are not necessarily a form of heuristic “System 1” thought (meaning they allow for thinking shortcuts). Emotions are initially elicited rapidly and can trigger swift action, consistent with “System 1.” But once activated, some emotions (e.g., sadness) can trigger systematic “System 2” thought (deliberate, focused, and reasoned thinking).
*bold comments added by me.
So what now?
I guess the overall comment here is, ‘be mindful’. Some of you might be reading this and think, “well I know emotions shape my thinking, so what?” Well to you I would say, good! I am glad you already possess that level of self-awareness. In that case, make sure you utilize it when listening to others as well. It’s easy to dismiss ideas you don’t agree with when they use emotive arguments, but think, don’t you sometimes do the same?
Empathy seems to be in short supply in today’s political culture. Showing a little consideration for others can go a long way in improving our dialogue and political community as a whole.
Now more than ever we need to take a long, hard look at the way we are doing politics. How we experience and engage with political issues is just as important — yet far less acknowledged — than simply the content of our political ideas. To read more on this topic, feel free to subscribe to Practicing Politics, a new publication looking at how it is we ‘do’ our politics…
