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Old-fashioned racism and today’s subtle form of racism are both driven by anger. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores whether particular emotions are connected to Whites' prejudice attitudes. I expect anger (not anxiety) to prime Whites' prejudice attitudes. The first study makes use of the 1985 American National Election Study (ANES), to establishing anger's connection with prejudice. The second study is an experiment where I induced either anger or anxiety. In study 1, I found that anger and not fear has a strong connection with racial resentment. Also, fear, rather than anger, is associated with race-neutral principles. For study 2, I found inducing anger in general boost racial resentment's impact on affirmative action. More specifically, anger increased racially sympathetic Whites' support for affirmative action as well as increasing racially resentful Whites' opposition to affirmative action, pushing the two groups in opposite directions. Priming fear did not activate prejudice attitudes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The network-dominated era placed significant constraints on mass political information seeking, thereby reducing the potential for selective exposure. There is some concern, however, that the Internet fosters selectivity by allowing people to more easily filter out information they might disagree with. We suspect, however, that the flexibility of this information environment will facilitate selectivity under some circumstances but undermine it in others. In line with the seminal work in selective exposure presented by Sears and Freedman (1967), we predict that the web will be used to search for balanced political information when people are motivated to do so. This motivation comes from the interaction of two factors: individual differences and situational emotional triggers. In two separate experiments, we find that anxiety boosts balanced information seeking among those who are highly invested in politics (strong partisans) or those who perceive the information available to them to be useful. Non-partisans and those who do not perceive the information to be useful respond to anxiety by withdrawing from information they disagree with. These findings reaffirm Sears and Freedman's earlier insights, and demonstrate that the Internet is likely to have neither universally positive nor negative effects on political information seeking in contemporary society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the impact of specific emotional states, such as anxiety, anger, and enthusiasm, on political interest, information seeking, and selective exposure. It was found that both anxiety and anger increased self-reported interest in the campaign, but all three emotions significantly reduced total time spent seeking out information online and also boosted selective exposure.