The curious, context‐dependent case of anger: Explaining voting intentions in three different national elections

Abstract

Collective action is typically studied in social protest contexts and predicted by different motivations (i.e., ingroup identification and efficacy beliefs, and outgroup‐directed anger). Assuming that voting to some extent reflects a form of collective action, we tested whether these three different motivations predicted voting in Dutch, Israeli, and Italian national election contexts. Based on previous meta‐analyses on voting and collective action, we hypothesized that identification with and efficacy beliefs regarding this party would motivate voting across the different elections (i.e., context‐independent effects). As for anger, we predicted more context‐dependent effects, depending on whether the anger is targeting the previous government or at the political system at large. Results were largely in line with predictions, showing the relatively context‐independent motivational power of party identification and efficacy beliefs, and clearly context‐dependent effects for anger. Specifically, we found little support for a similar motivational power of anger targeting previous government policies, but anger targeting politics in general demotivated Dutch and Israeli participants to vote (interpreted as an expression of political cynicism), while curiously motivating Italian participants to vote (interpreted as a desire for system change from “old” to “new” politics). We discuss these findings in the context of voting in national elections, and recommend further integration of the voting and social protest literatures.

Building a Tower of Babel? Integrating Core Motivations and Features of Social Structure into the Political Psychology of Political Action

“…Movement activists, for instance, indeed are motivated by their politicized group identification but also by outcome expectancy (Simon et al, ; Stürmer & Simon, ). Similarly, voting turnout can be predicted by party identification but also by a sense of civic duty (Smets & Van Ham, ), which resonates with Van Zomeren et al's () finding that, across three different national elections, voter identification and party efficacy beliefs predicted voting intentions. The key point here is that to restrict one's analysis of motivation for political action to group identity seems as limiting as restricting it to outcome expectancy.…”

“…A recent set of studies (Van Zomeren, Susilani, & Berend, ) examined willingness for collective action in a context assumed to be one with closed intergroup boundaries and a stable and possibly even legitimate intergroup status differences, studying how Indonesian ethnic minority‐group members dealt with their low‐group status in society. They found and replicated a rare null relationship between ethnic‐group identification and willingness to engage in collective action (Van Zomeren et al, ), suggesting that under different structural conditions, group identification does not motivate willingness to engage in collective action. This fits with the general notion that core motivations are not motivational “givens” but potentials to be realized within the social structure.…”

“…A recent meta‐analysis on voter turn‐out, which was not in any way guided by the specific assumptions and definitions used in the collective action literature, identifies party identification as a robust and positive predictor of (actual or intended) voter turnout (Smets & Van Ham, ). Furthermore, Van Zomeren, Saguy, Mazzoni, and Cicognani () found that voter identification (conceptualized as identification with the group that feels one ought to vote to do one's democratic duty) predicted voting intentions in Dutch, Italian, and Israeli national election contexts. These authors suggested that this type of identification may also reflect, in this political context, an “inner obligation to participate” that is reminiscent of strong group norms about action in action‐oriented groups and social movements (Stürmer & Simon, ).…”

“…Similarly, Valentino et al () found that personal anger mobilized individuals to vote across experimental, survey, and ANES (American National Election Studies) data, and Groenendyk and Banks (2013) found that personal anger predicted political action in an experiment and two different parts of the ANES database. Finally, Van Zomeren et al () studied individuals’ intention to vote in three national‐election contexts (in the 2012–13 elections in the Netherlands, Israel, and Italy). They found that whereas anger about politics in general demotivated voting among Dutch and Israeli participants, it motivated voting among Italian participants.…”

The Volatility of Collective Action: Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Data

“…There is evidence consistent with SIMCA from research into collective action across a range of sociopolitical and cultural contexts, including protest in South Africa (Cakal, Hewstone, Schwär, & Heath, 2011); among Lebanese religious groups (Tabri & Conway, 2011); among Spanish students and citizens (Sabucedo, Dono, Alzate, & Seoane, 2018); in "third groups" in the context of intergroup conflict (Klavina & van Zomeren, 2018); or in Dutch, Israeli, and Italian national elections (van Zomeren, Saguy, Mazzoni, & Cicognani, 2018). More recently, SIMCA has been extended with the inclusion of moral conviction as a fourth variable predicting when collective action will emerge (van Zomeren, 2013;van Zomeren, Kutlaca, & Turner-Zwinkels, 2018).…”