Liberals vs. Conservatives on The Value of Emotions

As the political divide has grown wider in recent years, Psychological Science researchers from the University of California, Irvine set out to determine why. They theorized that perhaps Democrats and Republicans' core difference lies in the way they view emotions.

The researchers performed three different studies of undergrad students in order to test their hypothesis. They surveyed over 1,000 people and asked them various questions regarding both their perspective on emotions as well as their political preferences.

The study defined liberal or left-leaning political views as those that emphasize the importance of ‘individuating’ moral foundations such as Care and Fairness. Whereas right-leaning views were identified as ‘socially binding’ moral foundations of Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity

Questions included asking aboout the functionality of emotions, the intensity of emotional experiences, voting habits, etc. Some studies asked for students' emotional reactions after taking an exam. They tested to find commonalities between political party and emotions.

Across all the three tests, results were consistent - there is a strong link between liberal views and reporting more importance of emotions. Left-leaning participants reported emotions as being more functional and a valuable part of rational decision making.

In addition, participants were asked about their emotions before and after an exam. Those who reported more liberal views and whom received the grade they anticipated were happier about the outcome than those with right leaning views.

Another assessment was done based on the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential elections. Researchers compared the way participants voted to the actual election results. The idea was to gauge participants' emotional response to either getting or not getting their desired result.

This test showed emotional responses were consistent with previous findings, with conservative participants reporting less intense emotions based on the results of the election compared to their votes, and liberal participants reporting more emotional responses to the results.

“Our findings suggest though that liberals view emotion as a feature of rationality while conservatives view it as a bug. Across 3 studies, liberals viewed emotion as more functional than conservatives – that is, as a healthy source of information about the self." -Minyoung Choi

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