People generally overestimated how intensely they would feel in the wake of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, according to new research published in the journal Cognition and Emotion. However, Donald Trump supporters with particularly strong negative beliefs about Joe Biden experienced more intense emotions than they had anticipated.
The United States has experienced growing hostility and polarization around political elections over the past decade. Researchers have noted that many voters perceive the election of the opposing candidate as a direct threat to themselves and the groups they care about.
In the 2020 U.S. presidential election, for instance, nearly 90% of both Trump and Biden supporters believed that the other candidate’s election would cause lasting harm to society. The new study aimed to understand the relationship between voters’ beliefs about the candidates and their anticipated and actual emotional responses to the election outcomes.
“We became interested in presidential elections in the United States because of the increasing amount of emotion expressed by voters around the outcome of these elections,” said study author Heather C. Lench, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Texas A&M University. “The news is filled with people who are angry, proud, sad, overjoyed, and afraid at election outcomes. We know emotions have a powerful influence on how people think and behave, and we were curious at what the effects might be with elections and voting.”
The researchers recruited undergraduate students from two large universities in California and Texas to participate in the study. The final sample comprised 477 participants, with 396 identifying as Biden supporters and 84 as Trump supporters.
The study utilized a longitudinal design with two online surveys: one conducted before the election and the other shortly after the election results were announced. The first survey, administered between 12 days to one day before the election, asked participants to forecast how frequently they would feel happiness, anger, and fear if either Trump or Biden won. These emotional forecasts were rated on a nine-point scale ranging from “not at all” to “constantly.” Participants also rated the extent to which they believed each candidate would either save or destroy American society on a seven-point scale.
The second survey was conducted four days after the election results were announced. Participants were asked to report how frequently they felt happiness, anger, and fear about the election outcome on that particular day, again using a nine-point scale. Additionally, they indicated how often they thought about the election result. The researchers used these responses to compare the forecasted emotions with the actual experienced emotions.
One of the primary findings was that stronger beliefs about the candidates were associated with more intense forecasts of emotion following the election. Participants who believed their preferred candidate would save society predicted higher levels of happiness if their candidate won, while those who believed the opposing candidate would destroy society forecasted greater anger and fear if that candidate won.
Voting behavior was also influenced by these emotional forecasts. The researchers found that Biden supporters were more likely to vote than Trump supporters, a difference largely accounted for by their predictions of lower happiness and higher anger if Trump won the election. This suggests that negative emotions, particularly anger, played a significant role in motivating voter turnout. This aligns with previous research indicating that anger can be a powerful motivator of political action.
“The findings showed that people were motivated to vote when they had strong views of the political candidate of their opposition party,” Lench told PsyPost. “We don’t know yet if this is unique to the particular candidates. People should be aware of how political campaigns that use emotional tactics to portray the ‘other’ candidate could affect them.”
After the election, the researchers found a general tendency among participants to overestimate the intensity of their emotional responses. This overestimation was especially pronounced among Trump supporters, who felt less anger than they had anticipated following Biden’s victory.
However, for participants with stronger beliefs about the candidates, the pattern changed. Those with strong beliefs that Biden would save or Trump would destroy society thought more frequently about the election outcome and experienced even more intense emotions than they had forecasted. This suggests that strong beliefs can amplify the emotional impact of political events, making the actual emotional experience more intense than anticipated.
“We were initially surprised that supporters of Donald Trump were less angry after the election than they thought they would be, given the media attention to protests and expressed anger afterward,” Lench explained. “This made us look deeper into the findings, and this pattern was different for people who held strong beliefs about the candidates. Those with strong beliefs were even angrier than they thought they would be after the election.”
But the study, like all research, has limitations to consider. First, the sample consisted of college students, who may have different political and social concerns compared to the general population. Additionally, the study’s focus on a single political event during a period of heightened polarization also limits the generalizability of the findings. Future research should explore similar relationships in different contexts and time periods to better understand the dynamics between beliefs, emotions, and voting behavior.
“This was a single election with a particular context, and it also used self-reported emotions,” Lench noted. “It is possible the findings are unique to this specific election or the specific candidates. It’s also possible that people misreport or misremember their emotions. We’re excited to see what happens in the next election, as the candidates of the two major parties will be the same as in past election cycles.”
The study, “Voter emotional responses and voting behaviour in the 2020 US presidential election,” was authored by Heather C. Lench, Leslie Fernandez, Noah Reed, Emily Raibley, Linda J. Levine, and Kiki Salsedo.