Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
<mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 1/12/2014 |
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<mark>Journal</mark> | Personality and Individual Differences |
Volume | 71 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Pages (from-to) | 98-102 |
Publication Status | Published |
<mark>Original language</mark> | English |
Approach-avoidance frameworks for political ideology have been proposed with increasing frequency. Following such frameworks and a wider motivation-emotion literature, it was hypothesized that political ideology would be predictive of the extent to which anxiety (avoidance-related) versus anger (approach-related) words would be evident in written texts. Study 1 sampled user-generated text within conservative versus liberal Internet chat rooms. After correcting for the greater normative frequency of anger words, a crossover ideology by emotion type interaction was found. Study 2 found a parallel interaction among college students writing about a non-political topic. Political ideology thus has a discrete emotional signature, one favoring anxiety among conservatives and anger among liberals.