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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the scientific article published in PNAS reports<\/a>, the largest difference in bodily feeling concerned disgust.<\/strong> 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nPolitical emotions: why we feel them throughout the body<\/h3>\n\n\n\n