The Impact of Positive and Negative Affects in Direct-Democratic Campaigns

Abstract

The previous chapter has convincingly demonstrated that individuals make up their minds in accordance with their issue preferences. These effects were even more pronounced when arguments matched with their ideology. We can consider these preferences to be cognition-based because the judgment is made up of arguments in favour or against a proposal. In the traditional view of political decision making and judgment, emotions are considered erratic and sometimes even dangerous responses to political life (see for an overview Marcus 2002). However, in more than three decades, political scientists (Marcus 2002; Marcus and MacKuen 1993; Marcus et al. 2000), communication scholars (Dillard and Wilson 1993; Nabi, 2002), and psychologists (Abelson et al. 1982; Isbell and Ottati 2002) have revived and rehabilitated the role of emotions for the study of political life. All these approaches state that emotions and affective reactions can have important informational functions for voters.