The relationship between individual psychological factors and political polarization: the role of emotion regulation
Sabina Kosimova presented the results of her research at the seminar of the research laboratory
Political controversies can generate intergroup differentiation - different attitudes toward ingroup and outgroup - and induce negative emotions in their participants.
The study tested the hypothesis that reflection of negative emotions (IER) predicts lower levels of affective political polarization (differential attitudes toward in-group and out-group) compared to their suppression (SER). This relationship may be mediated by different forms of empathy. Roth's original emotional self-regulation questionnaire (Roth et al., 2009) was adapted to test the hypotheses; we also used the author's technique to measure affective polarization.
Reflection and rationalization of negative experiences were found to be associated with a cognitive type of empathy and predicted increased political polarization. In contrast, suppression of negative emotions allows for empathy for the outgroup, which predicts a decrease in polarization.
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