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A large literature has established a persistent association between the skills and resources citizens possess and their likelihood of participating in politics. However, the short-term motivational forces that cause citizens to employ those skills and expend resources in one election but not the next have only recently received attention. Findings in political psychology suggest specific emotions may play an important role in mobilization, but the question of “which emotions play what role?” remains an important area of debate. Drawing on cognitive appraisal theory and the Affective Intelligence model, we predict that anger, more than anxiety or enthusiasm, will mobilize. We find evidence for the distinctive influence of anger in a randomized experiment, a national survey of the 2008 electorate, and in pooled American National Election Studies from 1980 to 2004.

A number of political commentators and social scientists have speculated about the implications of the election of Barack Obama for race relations. Some of the more optimistic have suggested that the 2008 election demonstrated that Whites' racial attitudes have undergone a fundamental transformation. In this article, I seek to determine whether the putative transformation of Whites' racial attitudes has extended to levels of support for policies designed to alleviate racial inequality, the role of racial prejudice in shaping these policy preferences and whether or not prejudice influenced the presidential vote choice in 2008. Much of the analyses in this article rely upon comparisons between the 1988 election, the last time an African American candidate achieved some success in the Democratic presidential primaries, and the 2008 election utilizing survey data from the American National Election Studies (ANES). In general, I find scant evidence of a decline in the racial divide. Blacks and Whites remain as far apart on racial policy matters in 2008 as in 1988. Second, younger cohorts of Whites are no more racially liberal in 2008 than they were in 1988. Third, the racial divide is only partially mitigated among Obama supporters. Fourth, in analysis of Whites' racial policy preferences in 2008, I find that anti-Black stereotypes and indifference to Black suffering are among the strongest correlates of these opinions. Finally, I find that these same factors also contribute substantially to opposition to Obama in the 2008 election.

The rise of the Internet forces scholars to reevaluate the frequency and nature of political information seeking in the contemporary period. The functionality of the Internet makes passive exposure more difficult, and selective information seeking easier, than in the past. However, people may also use the Internet in a new and directed way—to arm themselves with information to express and defend their views either online or in the real world. The central question we explore in this paper is what explains balanced versus biased information seeking in the era of the Internet? We combine insights from Sears and Freedman (1967) with newer work on emotion to predict motivated selectivity: focusing specifically on the interaction between anxiety and information utility. Our central theoretical claim is that anxiety does not simply boost any information seeking; it triggers information seeking that is useful for addressing the problem at hand. Anxiety alone, therefore, does not guarantee a balanced information search. When counterattitudinal information is useful for some reason—for example, to defend their own opinions to others who may disagree—anxious citizens should seek it out. As a consequence, these subjects should learn more specific information about where each candidate stands on the issues. In an experiment we find support for these hypotheses. We conclude that while today's flexible Internet environment may permit selectivity, balanced seeking should still occur under a fairly common set of circumstances.

In this study we explore the mediating role of emotions in the process of becoming a politically informed citizen. Contrary to previous studies, we expect that anger and anxiety will have much different effects on this process. We suspect the role of anxiety is somewhat unique even among negative emotions as mediator of the causal effect of political threats on information seeking and learning. In addition, we speculate that anxiety should improve the quality of information seeking, not just its quantity. In one experiment, we induce emotions directly and find that while anger, enthusiasm, and anxiety can lead people to claim they will pay attention to the campaign, anger actually depresses total information seeking. In a second experiment, we examine the impact of realistic political threats and find that exposure triggers several emotions but that only anxiety boosts information seeking and learning.

Researchers have argued that explicit racial appeals are rejected in contemporary American politics because they are perceived as violating the norm of racial equality. We test this claim with an experimental design, embedded in a representative survey of Georgia where, until recently, the state flag featured the Confederate battle emblem. In our experiment, we manipulate the salience of racial cues in news accounts of the state flag controversy in Georgia. We hypothesize that women are more likely than men to reject explicit racial appeals. We focus on the effects of explicit messages in two areas: support for Confederate symbols and identification with the Democratic Party. As hypothesized, when the racial significance of this debate is made explicit support for the Confederate flag declines, but only among women. Similarly, explicit appeals lead to lower levels of Democratic identification among men, but among women the effects are weaker and less consistent.

Perceptions of threat occupy a central place in race relations in Blumer's theory of prejudice but few direct efforts to study such perceptions exist. Extending Blumer's reasoning, we hypothesize that such perceptions are driven by a group's feelings of racial alienation within the larger social order. The more that members of a particular racial group feel collectively oppressed and unfairly treated by society, the more likely they are to perceive members of other groups as potential threats. We also examine whether such perceptions spring from simple self-interest, orthodox prejudice such as negative feelings and stereotyping, or broad beliefs about social stratification and inequality. We use data from the 1992 Los Angeles County Social Survey, a large multiracial sample of the general population, to analyze the distribution and social and psychological underpinnings of perceived group competition. Our results support the racial alienation hypothesis as well as the hypotheses positing effects for self-interest, prejudice, and stratification beliefs. We argue that Blumer's group-position framework offers the most parsimonious integration and interpretation of the social psychological processes involved in the formation of perceptions of group threat and competition.

Although Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, some Whites nevertheless penalized him because of his race. In part, these penalties involved persistent rumors about his citizenship and religion. How did the Obama campaign respond to these rumors? We argue that the Obama campaign drew attention to his bi-racial ancestry and highlighted his association with Whites in order to curry favor with this constituency. We also argue that Republicans and conservatives were most receptive to this “Whitewashing” strategy, although Democrats and liberals were not immune. We test these hypotheses with a content analysis of presidential ads from the 2008 general election, an online experiment manipulating the racial content of an Obama ad, and two nationally representative surveys. Our hypotheses are generally confirmed and suggest that Obama succeeded in part because he accommodated, rather than challenged, existing racial hierarchies.

Recent evidence suggests that elites can capitalize on preexisting linkages between issues and social groups to alter the criteria citizens use to make political decisions. In particular, studies have shown that subtle racial cues in campaign communications may activate racial attitudes, thereby altering the foundations of mass political decision making. However, the precise psychological mechanism by which such attitudes are activated has not been empirically demonstrated, and the range of implicit cues powerful enough to produce this effect is still unknown. In an experiment, we tested whether subtle racial cues embedded in political advertisements prime racial attitudes as predictors of candidate preference by making them more accessible in memory. Results show that a wide range of implicit race cues can prime racial attitudes and that cognitive accessibility mediates the effect. Furthermore, counter-stereotypic cues—especially those implying blacks are deserving of government resources—dampen racial priming, suggesting that the meaning drawn from the visual/narrative pairing in an advertisement, and not simply the presence of black images, triggers the effect.

Previous research has shown that racial or ethnic prejudice is one of the most influential antecedents of opposition to more expansive immigration policies. In this paper, we explore whether a theoretical perspective derived from the group position model might represent an additional and complementary explanation for immigration attitudes. We also compare how well the prejudice and group position models explain immigration attitudes among both White and Black Americans. Most of the previous work in this literature focuses solely on Whites' attitudes, and it remains unclear how well models designed with this group in mind might also apply to African Americans. We rely upon the 2004-2005 National Politics Study to explore the power of these models. In general, we find that measures derived from the group position model account for immigration attitudes even after controlling for various forms of out-group prejudice. The pattern of results also differs considerably across the two racial groups in our study. Adapted from the source document.

As a growing number of states and municipalities consider reparative policies for Black Americans, it is important to understand what shapes support for and opposition to these policies. We explore the role that awareness of racial inequality plays in shaping attitudes. Drawing on data from a large, representative survey in Detroit and one national survey, we find that awareness of racial inequality plays a powerful role in the likelihood of supporting reparative policies. Yet, in follow-up surveys, we find that exposing respondents to information on the rationale for and importance of reparations does not shift public support. These findings suggest that it is the awareness of racial inequality that is cultivated over time that appears to be the dominant force in building support for reparations. These findings are particularly important during a time when many school districts are severely restricting access to information about the history of Black Americans.