Playing with Emotions: The Effect of Moral Appeals in Elite Rhetoric

Lipsitz, Keena

doi:10.1007/s11109-017-9394-8

Cited by 32 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Moral rhetoric has the potential to make salient in the minds of voters that politics is a matter of moral right and wrong, activating their emotions. Lipsitz () shares a similar intuition when she argues that moral appeals in political advertisements are a form of emotional appeal.…”

Section: Moral Rhetoric and Mobilizationmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Second, my article contributes to previous work on morality and politics (Clifford and Jerit ; Clifford et al. ; Lipsitz ; Ryan , ) by extending this area of research to the party level and beyond the United States into a comparative context. Third, my article adds to the literature on emotions and political participation (Brader ; Valentino et al.…”

mentioning

confidence: 88%

“…If so, moral appeals are most likely to increase the moral intuitions of voters who identify with the party, namely, copartisans, who are attentive and favorably predisposed to the party's message. Lipsitz (, 62) also highlights the importance of source credibility: “moral language in political advertising will resonate more with citizens when the ad is sponsored by a trusted candidate who they believe shares their interests.” This is in line with the theory of partisan‐motivated reasoning, which states that voters are favorably biased toward information that confirms their prior beliefs (Bisgaard ; Redlawsk ; Taber and Lodge ). People are inclined to accept information that reinforces their predispositions and evaluate congruent arguments as stronger.…”

Section: Moral Rhetoric and Mobilizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, existing morality research argues that positive, elevated emotions are consequences of heightened moral intuitions (Haidt ; Skitka and Wisneski ; Tangney, Stuewig, and Mashek ). Other emotions like anger at rival parties and opposing voters can be stimulated if moral rhetoric is other‐condemning (Lipsitz ), but I focus on positive emotions since they are likely to be more consistently activated. They will occur not only when moral rhetoric is self‐promoting, but also when it is other‐condemning: By criticizing the morality of their rivals, parties highlight that they themselves are on a morally higher ground.…”

Section: Moral Rhetoric and Mobilizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moral psychology suggests that heightened moral intuitions make people emotional (Haidt ; Skitka and Wisneski ). If so, moral rhetoric should emotionally activate copartisans (see Lipsitz ). Specifically, I expect moral rhetoric to increase positive emotions, such as pride, hopefulness, and excitement, because moral rhetoric primes that the party is on a morally higher ground, making copartisans see their partisan preference in a more favorable light (see Haidt ; Tangney, Stuewig, and Mashek ).…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Mobilizing Effect of Parties' Moral Rhetoric

Jung

2019

American J Political Sci

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How does parties' use of moral rhetoric affect voter behavior? Prior comparative party research has studied party positions without much attention to how parties explain and justify their positions. Drawing insights from political and moral psychology, I argue that moral rhetoric mobilizes copartisan voters by activating positive emotions about their partisan preference. I expect this to hold among copartisans who are exposed to party rhetoric. To test my argument, I measure moral rhetoric by text‐analyzing party manifestos from six English‐speaking democracies and measure mobilization using copartisan turnout in survey data. The results support my argument. Furthermore, I find evidence in support of the theoretical mechanism using survey experiments and panel survey data from Britain. The article shows that moral rhetoric is a party campaign frame that has important consequences for voter behavior.

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Section: Moral Rhetoric and Mobilizationmentioning

confidence: 85%

mentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Moral Rhetoric and Mobilizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Moral Rhetoric and Mobilizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Mobilizing Effect of Parties' Moral Rhetoric

Jung

2019

American J Political Sci

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A tale of two hashtags: An examination of moral content of pro‐ and anti‐government tweets in Turkey

Bayrak

Alper

2021

Euro J Social Psych

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Amidst the 2018 presidential campaign, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said "If one day our nation says tamam 1 (enough), then we will step aside" in his parliamentary speech. After Erdoğan's speech, there was a burst of comments on social media, especially on Twitter (Pierpoint et al., 2018). Opponents of Erdogan, including the members of parliament from opposition parties, reacted to Erdogan's words by tweeting using the "#tamam" hashtag, which was used to advocate that it is enough and it is time for Erdogan to step aside. As a reaction to this, Erdogan's supporters, including some of the ministers and deputies, responded by starting the hashtag "#devam" (which means "continue") to show their support for Erdogan's government. These two hashtags were used almost 2 million times in one day and they both ended up on Twitter's worldwide trending topic list (Pierpoint et al., 2018). In this study, the pro-and antigovernment tweets with the "#tamam" and "#devam" hashtags were analyzed in terms of their moral content. We examined the content of 186,554 tweets (86,554 pro-and 100,000 anti-government) within the framework of the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT;

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Emotions, Morality, and Political Participation Behaviors in Online Activism

2022

Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies

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The chapter analyzes emotional expressions and corresponding moral dimensions in messages posted on the Chinese social media Weibo, and the participation character of public responses online, modeling their emergence and trajectories, and explaining the conditions that are necessary for them to evolve. Through statistical and qualitative interpretative analyses of a sample of observed emotions of Weibo posts over the course of 26 days in the Quangang carbon nine leak incident, as online environmental activism in 2018, we reveal that (1) different emotions exert miscellaneous effects on participation behaviors; (2) the same emotion would have disparate effects on different types of participation behaviors; and (3) the occurrence of moral dimensions especially promoted the generation and expression of activists’ emotions, which were magnified and strengthened through their spread on Weibo. Emotional expressions and their moral dynamics have shaped, but also been shaped by, the nature of the event and specific sociopolitical context and experience. The implications advance the understudied complexity between emotions, morality, and political participation behaviors in online activism in the authoritarian context.

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Playing with Emotions: The Effect of Moral Appeals in Elite Rhetoric

Cited by 32 publications

References 39 publications

The Mobilizing Effect of Parties' Moral Rhetoric

The Mobilizing Effect of Parties' Moral Rhetoric

A tale of two hashtags: An examination of moral content of pro‐ and anti‐government tweets in Turkey

Emotions, Morality, and Political Participation Behaviors in Online Activism

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