Politics Under the Skin: How Political Emotions Move the Body

Politics and emotion: the body reacts first

We feel them physically, often throughout the body. They change our feelings and our perception of the world. And that directly affects whether we vote, sign a petition, or join a protest. Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, and the Centre for the Politics of Feelings examined how people locate emotions in the body when they think about everyday situations, and how they do so when politics enters the picture.

In a study on how politics affects the body, 992 adult Americans described everyday situations in which they felt hope, disgust, anxiety, anger, and a depressive state. The participants then matched those emotions, and their intensity, to specific areas of the body. Later, they repeated the task, but instead of ordinary circumstances from daily life, they considered a political issue of their choice. The differences proved clear. They showed that politics influences not only our opinions and emotions, but also the way the body feels those emotions.

Political emotions: why we feel them throughout the body

As the scientific article published in PNAS reports, the largest difference in bodily feeling concerned disgust. Usually, we associate disgust with aversion to food, drink, or smell, and it primarily involves the throat and stomach. When political emotions entered the scene, however, the reaction moved into the head and upper body. That made it resemble anger more than classic disgust.

Hope linked to political activity appeared less strongly in the body than hope connected with personal life. Perhaps this stems from the fact that political visions more often carry fear, anxiety, or aversion toward political opponents. The depressive state looked different. It became more active under a political impulse and involved larger areas of the body.

Even so, these emotions did not remain only in the physical sphere. They had consequences for real attitudes and actions.

People who felt political emotions more strongly and more broadly in the body were more willing to take various forms of political action. They voted, took part in protests, signed petitions, and shared political materials with which they agreed. Feelings toward the opposing political party are also interesting here. One might assume that strong emotions and bodily reactions would significantly intensify negative perceptions of opponents. Yet the study’s results present a more complex picture.

How politics affects the body when news activates emotion

Stronger feelings experienced physically did not translate clearly into greater hostility toward supporters of the opposing party. This means emotional arousal may have mobilized people to act more than it deepened political hostility.

This is one of the study’s most important conclusions. Political emotions do not have to lead only to tribal aggression. They can also push people toward participation in public life. The authors of the analyses stress that their findings do not prove conclusively that heightened emotional response causes greater political activity. They do, however, show a clear relationship between what happens in the body and engagement in social life.

Not only the mind: politics affects the whole organism

The findings on the connection between political activity and bodily response invite reflection on how democracy functions. If we are more willing to act when our organism responds to strong emotions connected with politics, then perhaps democracy does not rest only on rational views and convictions. It may also depend on how deeply we are able to feel social and political events.

This is a kind of reminder that the human being does not only think, but also feels. Tight stomachs, tense hearts, and contracted muscles may have more to do with democracy than we suppose. Political emotions, it turns out, do not end in the head. They move beneath the skin.

Read this article in Polish: Polityka nie kończy się w głowie. Dosłownie wchodzi pod skórę