Fear and Loathing in American Elections: Context, Traits, and Negative Candidate Affect

Abstract

Affect-based models of political behavior have become increasingly complex. Not long ago, political psychology was dominated by bipolar conceptions of affect such as the familiar feeling thermometers. Such conceptions assume that movement toward one pole (e.g., positive affect) of necessity implies movement away from the other pole (e.g., negative affect). When researchers discovered that people can simultaneously experience positive and negative affect toward the same object and that these experiences had distinctive effects (Cacioppo and Berntson 1999; Cacioppo, Gardner, and Berntson 1997; Cacioppo et al. 1993; Gray 1982, 1987a, 1987b; Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen 2000), bipolar, unidimensional conceptions of affect gave way to a two-dimensional model. This model, which distinguishes between positive and negative affect, is now widely accepted in political psychology (Abelson et al. 1982; Conover and Feldman 1986; Marcus and MacKuen 1993; Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen 2000; Ottati, Steenbergen, and Riggle 1992).¹

The title is an allusion to Hunter Thompson’s famous book Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail, 1972 (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1973). The research in this chapter is based in part on the 1980 and 1995 National Election Studies: (1) Miller, Warren E., and the National Election Studies. NATIONAL ELECTION STUDIES, 1980 Major Panel Study [dataset]. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, Center for Political Studies [producer and distributor], 1999; (2) Rosenstone, Steven J., Warren E. Miller, Donald R. Kinder, and the National Election Studies. NATIONAL ELECTION STUDIES, 1995 Pilot Election Study [dataset]. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, Center for Political Studies [producer and distributor], 1999. These materials are based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos.: SBR-9707741, SBR-9317631, SES-9209410, SES-9009379, SES-8808361, SES-8341310, SES-8207580, and SOC77-08885. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation.