Pride and Compassion: How Emotional Strategies Target Audiences in Political Communication?

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51480/1899-5101.15.3(32).5

Keywords:

pride, compassion, empathy, political preferences, collective remembrance

Abstract

The paper discusses appeals to pride and compassion as emotional strategies for mobilization in political communication, developing the Emotional Rescue Model of enthusiasm, anger, and fear. Exploring general results of brain activity, facial expressions, cognitive responses, attitude change, and prosocial behavior, it examines how compelling pride-related and compassion-related narratives are. Moreover, it considers the possibilities of targeting emotional content to specific audiences, verifying how results correspond with participants’ empathy, political preferences, and attitudes toward collective remembrance. The paper explores age, gender, and election attendance as other possible factors correlated with the outcomes of manipulation. In conclusion, it suggested that appeals to pride should target supporters of the cause, but compassionate narratives can address non-supporters and undecided recipients.

Author Biography

Patryk Wawrzyński, University of Szczecin & Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń

Dr. Patryk Wawrzyński, adjunct at the Institute of Political Science and Security, University of Szczecin, a former researcher at Center for Modern Interdisciplinary Technologies, Nicolaus Copernicus University, founder and behavioral data analyst in Alpaka Innovations.

References

Adams, I., Hurst, K., & Sintov, N.D. (2020). Experienced guilt, but not pride, mediates the effect of feedback on pro-environmental behavior. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 71(101476). DOI: 1016/j.jenvp.2020.101476.

Amran, M.S., & Bakar, A.Y.A. (2020). We Feel, Therefore We Memorize: Understanding Emotions in Learning Mathematics Using Neuroscience Research Perspectives. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 8(11B), 5943–5950. DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2020.082229.

Barrett, L.F. (2017). How Emotions are Made. The Secret Life of the Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Bloom, P. (2017). Empathy and Its Discontents. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(1), 24–31. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2016.11.004.

Chierchia, G., & Singer, T. (2017). The Neuroscience of Compassion and Empathy and Their Link to Prosocial Motivation and Behavior. In. J.-C. Dreher & L. Tremblay (Eds.), Decision Neuroscience (pp. 247–257). Academic Press.

Clifford, S. (2019). How Emotional Frames Moralize and Polarize Political Attitudes. Political Psychology, 40(1), 75–91. DOI: 10.1111/pops.12507.

Crawford, N.C. (2014). Institutionalizing passion in world politics: fear and empathy. International Theory, 6(3), 535–557. DOI: 10.1017/s1752971914000256.

Czarnek, G., Dragon, P., Szwed, P., & Wojciszke, B. (2017). Kwestionariusz przekonań politycznych: własności psychometryczne. Psychologia społeczna, 12(2), 205–222. DOI: 10.7366/1896180020174108.

de León, E., & Trilling, D. (2021). A Sadness Bias in Political News Sharing? The Role of Discrete Emotions in the Engagement and Dissemination of Political News on Facebook. Social Media + Society. DOI: 10.1177/20563051211059710.

Eisenberg, N., & Eggum, N.D. (2009). Empathic responding: Sympathy and personal distress. In J. Decety & W. Ickes (Eds.), The Social Neuroscience of Empathy (pp. 71–83). MIT Press. DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/9780262012973.003.0007.

Ekman, P., & Friesen, W.V. (2003). Unmasking the Face. A guide to recognizing emotions from facial clues. Malor Books.

Feldman Hall, O., Dalgleish, T., Evans, D., & Mobbs, D. (2015). Empathic concern drives costly altruism. NeuroImage, 105, 347–356. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.10.043.

Fredrickson, B.L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226. DOI: 10.1037//0003-066x.56.3.218.

Fredrickson, B.L. (2013). Updated thinking on positivity ratios. American Psychologist, 68(9), 814–822. DOI: 10.1037/a0033584.

Fredrickson, B.L., & Branigan, C. (2005). Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought-action repertoires. Cognition & Emotion, 19(3), 313–332. DOI: 10.1080/02699930441000238.

Gallego, A., & Oberski, D. (2011). Personality and Political Participation: The Mediation Hypothesis. Political Behavior, 34(3), 425–451. DOI: 10.1007/s11109-011-9168-7.

Goetz, J.L., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2017). The Landscape of Compassion: Definitions and Scientific Approaches. In E.M. Seppälä, E. Simon-Thomas, S.L. Brown, M.C. Worline, C.D. Cameron & J.R. Doty (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science (pp. 3–15). Oxford University Press.

Groenendyk, E.W., & Banks, A.J. (2014). Emotional Rescue: How Affect Helps Partisans Overcome Collective Action Problems. Political Psychology, 35(3), 359–378. DOI: doi.org/10.1111/pops.12045.

Hasell, A., & Weeks, B.E. (2016). Partisan provocation: The role of partisan news use and emotional responses in political information sharing in social media. Human Communication Research, 42(4), 641–661. DOI: 10.1111/hcre.12092.

Herlin, B., Navarro, V., & Dupont, S. (2021). The temporal pole: From anatomy to function—A literature appraisal. Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy, 113, 101925. DOI: 10.1016/j.jchemneu.2021.101925.

Hu X., Zhuang C., Wang F., Liu Y-J., Im C.-H., & Zhang D. (2019). fNIRS Evidence for Recognizably Different Positive Emotions. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 13(120), 1–11. DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00120.

Jäger, K. (2020). When Do Campaign Effects Persist for Years? Evidence from a Natural Experiment. American Journal of Political Science 64(4), 836–850. DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12488.

Jensen, M. (2018). The purposes of interpersonal communication: A survey to find the most likely general reasons why people engage in communication. Central European Journal of Communication, 11(1), 25–28. DOI: 10.19195/1899-5101.11.1(20).2.

Kazlauskaitė, R. (2022). Embodying ressentimentful victimhood: virtual reality re-enactment of the Warsaw uprising in the Second World War Museum in Gdańsk. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 28(6), 699–713. DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2022.2064897.

Kazlauskaitė, R., & Salmela, M. (2022). Mediated emotions: shame and pride in Polish right-wing media coverage of the 2019 European Parliament elections. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 35(1), 130–149. DOI: 10.1080/13511610.2021.1952551.

Kaźmierczak, M., Plopa, M., & Retowski, S. (2007). Skala Wrażliwości Empatycznej. Przegląd Psychologiczny 50(1), 9–24.

Kim, J.J., Cunnington, R., & Kirby, J.N. (2020). The neurophysiological basis of compassion: An fMRI meta-analysis of compassion and its related neural processes. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 108, 112–123. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.10.023.

Klimecki, O.M., Leiberg, S., Lamm, C., & Singer, T. (2013). Functional Neural Plasticity and Associated Changes in Positive Affect After Compassion Training. Cerebral Cortex, 23(7), 1552–1561. DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhs142.

Kong, F., He, Q., Liu, X., Chen, X., Wang, X., & Zhao, J. (2018). Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations During Resting State Differentially Predicts Authentic and Hubristic Pride. Journal of Personality, 86(2), 213–219. DOI: 10.1111/jopy.12306.

Kumar, A., & Chakrabarti, S. (2021). Charity Donor Behavior: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda. Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing, 1–46. DOI: 10495142.2021.1905134.

Landau, M.J., Sullivan, D., & Greenberg, J. (2009). Evidence That Self-Relevant Motives and Metaphoric Framing Interact to Influence Political and Social Attitudes. Psychological Science, 20(11), 1421–1427. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02462.x.

LeDoux, J.E. (2015). Anxious. The modern mind in the age of anxiety. Oneworld Publications.

Lewinski, P. (2015). Automated facial coding software outperforms people in recognizing neutral faces as neutral from standardized datasets. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(1386). DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01386.

Li, W., Yang, P., Ngetich, R. K., Zhang, J., Jin, Z., & Li, L. (2021). Differential involvement of frontoparietal network and insula cortex in emotion regulation. Neuropsychologia, 161, 107991. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107991.

Luxon, N. (2016). Beyond mourning and melancholia: Nostalgia, anger and the challenges of political action. Contemporary Political Theory, 15, 139–159. DOI: 10.1057/cpt.2015.49.

Mackie, D. M., Devos, T., & Smith, E. R. (2000). Intergroup emotions: Explaining offensive action tendencies in an intergroup context. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(4), 602–616. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.79.4.602.

Moody-Adams, M.M. (2017). Moral Progress and Human Agency. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 20, 153–168. doi.org/10.1007/s10677-016-9748-z.

Patel, S., Oishi, K., Wright, A., Sutherland-Foggio, H., Saxena, S., Sheppard, S.M., & Hillis, A.E. (2018). Right Hemisphere Regions Critical for Expression of Emotion Through Prosody. Frontiers in Neurology, 9. DOI: 10.3389/fneur.2018.00224.

Rico, G., Guinjoan, M., & Anduiza, E. (2017). The Emotional Underpinnings of Populism: How Anger and Fear Affect Populist Attitudes. Swiss Political Science Review, 23(4), 444–461. DOI: 10.1111/spsr.12261.

Riegel, M., Wierzba, M., Wypych, M., Żurawski, Ł., Jednoróg, K., Grabowska, A. & Marchewka, A. (2015). Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL): the cultural adaptation of the Berlin Affective Word List–Reloaded (BAWL-R) for Polish. Behavior Research Methods, 47, 1222–1236. DOI: 10.3758/s13428-014-0552-1.

Salmela, M., & von Scheve, C. (2017). Emotional roots of right-wing political populism. Social Science Information, 56(4), 567–595. DOI: 10.1177/0539018417734419.

Sandi, C., & Haller, J. (2015). Stress and the social brain: behavioural effects and neurobiological mechanisms. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16, 290–304. DOI: 10.1038/nrn3918.

Scheller, S. (2019). The strategic use of fear appeals in political communication. Political Communication, 36(4), 586–608. DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2019.1631918.

Singer, T., & Klimecki, O.M. (2014). Empathy and compassion. Current Biology, 24(18), R875-R878. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.06.054.

Stevens, F., & Taber, K. (2021). The neuroscience of empathy and compassion in pro-social behavior. Neuropsychologia, 159(107925). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107925.

Tracy, J.L., Mercadante, E., Witkower, Z., & Cheng, J.T. (2020). The evolution of pride and social hierarchy. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 62, 51–114. DOI: 10.1016/bs.aesp.2020.04.002.

Vafeiadis, M., & Xiao, A. (2021). Fake news: How emotions, involvement, need for cognition, and rebuttal evidence (story vs. informational) influence consumer reactions toward a targeted organization. Public Relations Review, 47(4), 102088. DOI: 10.1016/j.pubrev.2021.102088.

Van Cappellen, P., & Rimé, B. (2014). Positive emotions and self-transcendence. In V. Saroglou (Ed.), Religion, personality, and social behavior (pp. 123–145). Psychology Press.

Van Stekelenburg, J. (2017). Radicalization and Violent Emotions. PS: Political Science & Politics, 50(4), 936–939. DOI: 10.1017/s1049096517001020.

Verbalyte, M., Bonansinga, D., & Exadaktylos, T. (2022). When emotions run high: affective responses to crises in Europe. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 35(1), 1–13. DOI: 10.1080/13511610.2022.2040832.

Wawrzyński, P., & Schattkowsky, R. (2015). Attitudes towards the Government’s Remembrance Policy in Poland: Results of an Experimental Study. Politics in Central Europe, 11(2), 73–94. DOI: 10.1515/pce-2015-0012.

Wawrzyński, P. (2017). Government’s Remembrance Policy: Five Theoretical Hypotheses. Polish Political Science Yearbook, 46(1), 294–312. DOI: 10.15804/ppsy2017119.

Webster, V., Brough, P., & Daly, K. (2016). Fight, Flight or Freeze: Common Responses for Follower Coping with Toxic Leadership. Stress & Health, 32(4), 346–354. DOI: 10.1002/smi.2626.

Weeks, B.E. (2015). Emotions, Partisanship, and Misperceptions: How Anger and Anxiety Moderate the Effect of Partisan Bias on Susceptibility to Political Misinformation. Journal of Communication, 65(4), 699–719. DOI: 10.1111/jcom.12164.

Weng, H.Y., Fox, A.S., Shackman, A.J., Stodola, D.E., Caldwell, J.Z.K., Olson, M.C., Rogers, G.M., & Davidson, R.J. (2013). Compassion Training Alters Altruism and Neural Responses to Suffering. Psychological Science, 24(7), 1171–1180. DOI: 10.1177/0956797612469537.

Wester, M. (2011). Fight, Flight or Freeze: Assumed Reactions of the Public During a Crisis. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 19(4), 207–214. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5973.2011.00646.x.

Wildman, T. (2021). How Emotional Are Populists Really? Factors Explaining Emotional Appeals in the Communication of Political Parties. Political Psychology, 42(1), 163–181. DOI: 10.1111/pops.12693.

Wirz, D. (2018). Persuasion Through Emotion? An Experimental Test of the Emotion-Eliciting Nature of Populist Communication. International Journal of Communication, 12, 1114–1138. Retrieved from https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/7846/2287.

Wirz, D., Wettstein, M., Schulz, A., Müller, P., Schemer, C., Ernst, N., Esser, F., & Wirth, W. (2018). The Effects of Right-Wing Populist Communication on Emotions and Cognitions toward Immigrants. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 23(4), 496–516. DOI: 10.1177/1940161218788956.

Wollebæk, D., Karlsen, R., Steen-Johnsen, K., & Enjolras, B. (2019). Anger, Fear, and Echo Chambers: The Emotional Basis for Online Behavior. Social Media + Society, 5(2). DOI: 10.1177/2056305119829859.

Downloads

Published

2023-02-24

How to Cite

Wawrzyński, P. (2023). Pride and Compassion: How Emotional Strategies Target Audiences in Political Communication?. Central European Journal of Communication, 15(3(32), 416-433. https://doi.org/10.51480/1899-5101.15.3(32).5

Issue

Section

Scientific Papers