The emotional construal of war: Anger, fear, and other negative emotions.

Abstract

This study builds on the functionalist approach to examine whether emotions are specifically and robustly linked to action tendencies outside of the laboratory. In the year following the events of 9/11, four samples, totaling 546 college students, participated in a series of studies. Participants reported their negative emotions after viewing photographs of the 9/11 attack. The behavior of the participants and their support for President Bush's decision to deploy troops in the Middle East were assessed as proxies for action tendencies. Anger specifically predicted support for military action. Fear predicted current and anticipated future avoidant behaviors. All of these links between emotion and action tendency were robust across the four naturalistic circumstances. The results supported the functionalist approach to emotions, and provided a new angle to understand the public support for war. The results are discussed in the context of frustration-aggression, fear tactics, dimensional and discrete views, as well as classic literature on war.The abundance of historical data and the dire consequences associated with war have attracted countless investigations. The widely cited causes for war include regional differences in religion, politics, and resources (Bennett & Rupert, 2003; de Mesquita, 1981), as well as the mindset of individual citizens (Cohrs & Moschner, 2002;Fiske, 1987). Although it is quantitatively convenient to understand war from a strictly analytical perspective, war is a hot-blooded enterprise fueled by

The positive effect of negative emotions in protracted conflict: The case of anger

“…Research has repeatedly shown that anger leads to support for aggressive behavior (Cheung-Blunden & Blunden, 2008;Huddy et al, 2007;Lerner et al, 2003;Skitka et al, 2006). However, the studies presented here support the argument that there is at least one additional behavioral response that group anger can arouse.…”

“…Other studies find that individuals who feel angry appraise future military attack as less risky (Lerner & Keltner, 2001) and forecast more positive consequences of such attack (Huddy et al, 2007). Accordingly, studies conducted in the U.S following the 9/11 attacks found that angry individuals were highly supportive of an American military response in Iraq and elsewhere (Cheung-Blunden & Blunden, 2008;Huddy et al, 2007;Lerner et al, 2003).…”

Morality in intergroup conflict

“…In turn, group-based anger prompts various action tendencies, which can be either destructive (consistent with anger's negative valence) or constructive (consistent with anger's approach orientation) [23]. Individuals who experience group-based anger show stronger support for retaliation [25], but also report greater willingness to engage in risky, non-aggressive political negotiations [22] and elicit stronger empathic responses from out-group members [26]. Evidence suggests that anger becomes destructive in the presence of other negative, avoidance-oriented emotions such as group-based hatred [23] or group-based contempt [26,27].…”

Together we cry: Social motives and preferences for group-based sadness

“…Finally, our findings might also carry implications for the study of intergroup relations, more generally. Previous research has shown that the experience of negative emotions leads to more support of aggressive actions towards the adversarial group (Cheung-Blunden & Blunden, 2008;Halperin et al, 2013;Skitka et al, 2006). The current investigation suggests that such emotional experiences may be driven by a desire to strengthen group coherence.…”