“The Political Is Personal: The Costs of Daily Politics”, 2023-01-23 ():
[supplement] Politics and its controversies have permeated everyday life, but the daily impact of politics on the general public is largely unknown. Here, we apply an affective science framework to understand how the public experiences daily politics in a two-part examination.
We first used longitudinal, daily diary methods to track two samples of US participants as they experienced daily political events across 2 weeks (Study 1: n = 198, observations = 2,167) and 3 weeks (Study 2: n = 811, observations = 12,790) to explore how these events permeated people’s lives and how people coped with that influence…participants reported the political event they thought about most that day, the emotions they felt in response, and how they managed those emotions (eg. reappraisal, distraction, suppression). Participants also reported their daily psychological well-being (eg. life satisfaction, sense of purpose, depression), physical well-being (eg. fatigue, illness), and motivation to engage in political action (eg. donate money, attend a protest).
In both diary studies, daily political events consistently not only evoked negative emotions, which corresponded to worse psychological and physical well-being, but also greater motivation to take political action (eg. volunteer, protest) aimed at changing the political system that evoked these emotions in the first place. Understandably, people frequently tried to regulate their politics-induced emotions, and regulating these emotions using effective cognitive strategies (reappraisal and distraction) predicted greater well-being, but also weaker motivation to take action.
Although people protected themselves from the emotional impact of politics, frequently used regulation strategies came with a trade-off between well-being and action.
Second, we conducted experimental studies where we manipulated exposure to day-to-day politics (Study 3, n = 922), and the use of various emotion regulation strategies in response (Study 4, n = 1,277)…we examined whether exposing participants to daily politics (vs. a neutral control) would cause greater negative emotion, and in turn, worse well-being but greater motivation for political action. In Study 4, we examined whether using emotion regulation (vs. a no-regulation control) would minimize the experience of negative emotions for participants exposed to daily politics, and in turn predict better well-being but less motivation for political action…we chose to present participants with a clip of recent daily political news from one of the top-rated news sources on television… and were asked to use an emotion regulation strategy (or a no-regulation control) when watching. We focused on 3 specific regulation strategies based on the results of Studies 1 & 2: (1) cognitive reappraisal, given that it showed the most consistent unique links with lower negative emotional responses to daily politics across both Studies 1 & 2; (2) distraction, given that it demonstrated comparable results to reappraisal in our more highly powered Study 2; and (3) emotional acceptance given the Study 2 results that it may provide some emotional relief without coming at a cost to downstream action…and found:
causal support for the central findings of Studies 1–2.
Overall, this research highlights how politics can be a chronic stressor in people’s daily lives, underscoring the far-reaching influence politicians have beyond the formal powers endowed unto them.
[Keywords: politics, well-being, emotion, emotion regulation, stress]
…How Are People Protecting Their Emotions in Daily Life? People were commonly motivated to regulate the emotions they felt in response to day-to-day political events. When focusing on emotion regulation attempts, people attempted reappraisal to at least some degree (ie. ratings above the lowest scale point) on 84% of the days, attempted distraction on 80% of the days, and attempted suppression on 70% of the days.