The Political is Personal: The Costs of Daily Politics

Abstract

Politics and its controversies have permeated everyday life, but the daily impact of politics is largely unknown. Here, we conceptualize politics as a chronic stressor with important consequences for people’s daily lives. We used longitudinal, daily-diary methods to track U.S. participants as they experienced daily political events across two weeks (Study 1: N=198, observations=2,167) and, separately, across three weeks (Study 2: N=811, observations=12,790) to explore how daily political events permeate people’s lives and how they cope with this influence of politics. In both studies, daily political events consistently evoked negative emotions, which corresponded to worse psychological and physical well-being, but also increased motivation to take political action (e.g., 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 successfully regulating these emotions using cognitive strategies (reappraisal and distraction) predicted greater well-being, but also weaker motivation to take action. Although people can protect themselves from the emotional impact of politics, frequently-used regulation strategies appear to come with a trade-off between well being and action. To examine whether an alternative approach to one’s emotions could avoid this trade-off, we measured emotional acceptance in Study 2 (i.e., accepting one’s emotions without trying to change them) and found that successful acceptance predicted greater daily well-being but no impairment to political action. 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.

Negativity Spreads More than Positivity on Twitter After Both Positive and Negative Political Situations

“…However, engagement in political contexts, especially when they involve negative language, may be one of the situations in which negative effects are more likely to occur. For example, a longitudinal study demonstrated that daily exposure to political situations was associated with worse physical and mental well-being (Feinberg et al, 2020). Additionally, exposure to hateful content can decrease social trust (Näsi et al, 2015) and exaggerate the feeling of outgroup threat (Lees & Cikara, 2020), which could add to negative well-being outcomes.…”

Negativity Spreads More than Positivity on Twitter after both Positive and Negative Political Situations

“…However, engagement in political contexts, especially when they involve negative language, may be one of those situations. For example, a longitudinal study demonstrated that daily exposure to political situations was associated with worse physical and mental well-being (Feinberg, Ford, Thai, Gatchpazian, & Lassetter, 2020). Additionally, exposure to hateful content can decrease social trust (Näsi et al, 2015), and exaggerate the feeling of outgroup threat (Lees & Cikara, 2020), which could add to negative well-being outcomes.…”

Cognition and Emotion in Extreme Political Action: Individual Differences and Dynamic Interactions

“…In research by Ford and colleagues (2018) concerning the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Clinton voters who used reappraisal to manage their emotions in response to Trump’s election were less likely to partake in political action than were Clinton voters who did not make use of reappraisal. Further longitudinal investigation of the association between reappraisal and political action has suggested that using reappraisal may be a double-edged sword (Feinberg et al, 2020; Ford & Feinberg, 2020): Although it helps the individual to cope with negative emotions related to politics, it can hinder the motivation to change the status quo through action. Investigating how emotion-regulation strategies impact predispositions toward normative and extreme political action is thus a worthwhile future research avenue.…”