A new study published in the journal Cognition and Emotion suggests that momentary emotional reactions interact with political beliefs to shape whether individuals find information trustworthy. The research provides evidence that feelings of anger and sadness increase trust in political statements, while joy tends to reduce political confirmation bias. These findings highlight how physical and emotional responses play a role in how humans judge the truthfulness of media.
Information is more accessible than ever, yet interpretations of the news are becoming increasingly polarized. Social media algorithms often amplify emotionally charged content, which tends to spread rapidly and deepen political divides. In this environment, people frequently encounter misinformation designed to manipulate opinions by triggering strong emotional reactions.
In psychology, confirmation bias describes the human tendency to favor information that aligns with a person’s existing beliefs. People often scrutinize or reject opposing views while easily accepting ideas that match their own worldview. This pattern reflects motivated reasoning, a process where individuals evaluate facts in ways that support their preferred ideological identity.
The authors of the current study wanted to understand how immediate emotional reactions might amplify or override this political confirmation bias. They based their work on the affect-as-information framework. This concept proposes that people use their current emotional states as a mental shortcut to judge whether information is trustworthy, especially when the content is ambiguous or politically sensitive.
Marja-Liisa Halko, a senior university lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki, explained the rationale behind the study. Her team wanted to understand the subconscious factors driving polarization.
“Public discussions about misinformation and political disagreement often focus on reasoning ability, partisan bias, or how people are persuaded by political messages,” Halko said. “But politics is rarely just about facts and reasoning, and political news and information often evoke strong emotional reactions in people.”
She noted that the researchers wanted to investigate if these feelings correlated with perceptions of truth. “We were interested in whether emotional responses are associated with whether information feels true or trustworthy,” Halko said. “More specifically, we wanted to understand how emotions may shape trust in political information among people with different ideological views.”
The research took place at the Aalto Behavioral Laboratory in Finland and included 62 adult participants. The sample consisted of 40 women, 19 men, and three individuals who did not disclose their gender, with an average age of about 32 years. Before the main experiment, participants completed questionnaires to measure their general emotional tendencies, recent mood states, and their social and economic conservatism.
During the experiment, each participant sat in a private room and evaluated 32 short statements. These excerpts covered divisive political topics like immigration, climate policy, taxation, and welfare. Half of the statements were factually true, adapted from reputable news sources, while the other half were false versions created by subtly altering factual details.
The statements were also balanced so that half favored conservative viewpoints and half favored liberal viewpoints. Participants looked at each statement on a computer screen for exactly ten seconds. Immediately afterward, they rated the perceived trustworthiness of the statement on a continuous scale ranging from zero to one hundred.
While the participants read the text, the researchers measured their physiological responses in real time. They attached sensors to the participants’ fingers to measure sweat gland activity, which indicates physical arousal. They also used electrocardiogram sensors to track heart rate and short-term heart rate variability, which reflect emotional regulation and stress.
At the same time, the researchers recorded the participants’ faces on video. They used specialized facial expression analysis software to detect subtle muscle movements. This software provided frame-by-frame estimates of seven distinct emotions, including anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise.
The researchers found that participants successfully distinguished true statements from false ones on average, rating the factual excerpts as more trustworthy. They also observed a strong pattern of political confirmation bias. Participants were highly likely to rate statements as trustworthy if the content aligned with their own political ideology.
Halko noted that the demographics of this group yielded unexpected results. “We were somewhat surprised that we found so clear differences in emotional responses and in their association with perceived trustworthiness, even though our participant sample was fairly homogeneous and the stimuli consisted only of short written texts rather than especially emotionally provocative material,” she said.
“Most of our participants were university students, meaning relatively highly educated, and many also reported following political news regularly,” Halko added. “One might expect these kinds of differences to be even stronger in more politically diverse or polarized populations.”
When looking at the facial expression data, the scientists found that specific emotional reactions were linked to these trust evaluations. Across the entire group, subtle facial expressions of anger and sadness were positively associated with higher trustworthiness ratings. Increases in these two negative emotions seemed to make participants more likely to believe the statements they were reading.
On the other hand, expressions of joy were linked to a reduction in political confirmation bias. When participants displayed subtle signs of joy, they were less likely to blindly trust information simply because it matched their political beliefs. The data suggests that positive emotions might act as a buffer against entrenched partisan perspectives.
“Our findings suggest that people do not evaluate information in a purely rational or detached way,” Halko told PsyPost. “Emotional responses can be associated with whether information feels true, and these associations may differ across political ideologies.”
She explained that human reactions play a meaningful role in cognition. “More broadly, the study highlights that feelings are not simply irrelevant ‘noise’ in political judgment,” Halko said. “They are part of how people make sense of information and the world around them.”
To ensure their results were accurate, the scientists controlled for several other psychological factors. They accounted for the participants’ general positive and negative affect, their interest in politics, and any overconfidence in their own task performance. The connection between emotional expressions and trust ratings remained consistent even when accounting for these background traits.
“The effects should not be interpreted as meaning that emotions alone determine whether people trust information,” Halko said. “Political judgments are shaped by many factors simultaneously.”
“At the same time, our findings suggest that emotional responses are not irrelevant, but a part of the broader psychological processes through which people engage with information,” Halko added. “Emotional reactions may sometimes reduce existing biases, while at other times they may widen the divide between different political viewpoints.”
The authors point out a few limitations. “One important caveat is that the study examined reactions to short written statements presented without source information, which differs from the way people typically encounter political content in real-world media environments,” Halko said.
“In everyday settings, the source itself can be an important part of how information is interpreted, although it remains unclear how source cues influence immediate emotional responses,” Halko noted.
Halko also emphasized that readers should not assume feelings destroy critical thinking. “Another potential misinterpretation would be to conclude that emotions simply make people irrational or incapable of evaluating information accurately,” she said. “That is not what we found.”
Instead, she views these reactions as standard psychological functions. “Emotional responses are a normal part of information processing, although they are often difficult to measure directly and are often not taken into account in research or public discussions about political judgment,” Halko said.
“Or, more accurately, people often say that someone is ‘reacting emotionally’ to political news,” Halko added. “In reality, everyone has emotional responses to information, including political information. The more important question is what follows from those reactions, that is, whether and how they influence judgments and decision-making.”
The study was conducted in Finland, which features a multi-party political system. Because political systems vary widely around the world, these specific emotional and ideological interactions might look different in countries with a strictly two-party system. Future research should apply this experimental design to larger, more diverse groups of people.
Halko detailed the team’s upcoming plans to expand their work. “Our first experiment was intentionally designed as a relatively controlled baseline study, but the next step is to study more ideologically heterogeneous populations and especially individuals at the ends of the ideological spectrum,” she said.
“We also plan to run the next experiment closer to an election period, when political identities, emotions, and media exposure are likely to be even more salient and emotionally engaging,” Halko said.
The study, “Sad but true: how emotions and political ideology shape perceptions of information,” was authored by Marja-Liisa Halko, Juho Halonen, Marita Laukkanen, Henri Nyberg, and Mikko Salmela.
