Debate preview - what to fear about the politics of fear
I’ll be live-blogging the debate with Seth Masket of the Tusk substack here tomorrow.
Last week, Trump announced on Truth Social that he would bring up “Biden migrant killings” at the first presidential debate of the season, with airs on CNN tonight. This phrase is as pithy as it is misleading; the fact that immigrants do not commit crimes at higher rates than the native-born population is well-documented. But rather than doing a full debate preview, I’m going to look at what research says these kinds of appeals can and can’t do.
There will be a lot of punditry about the “politics of fear” and its impact, and I want to use this space to highlight the research that political psychologists have done in this area. And there’s quite a bit to learn! One caveat is that most of these studies have been done using campaign ads or media frames that highlight/induce fear, not debates. The persuasive effects of debates, especially when we know a lot about the candidates, are much less well-established. But what I want to do here is provide a little defense against wild speculation about how emotional appeals work. A central theme of this literature is that emotions in politics occupy a world of complexity – political appeals can make people feel multiple emotions, and that emotions spur actions in ways that depend on context.
Fear will push voters toward restrictive positions on immigration – true
One thing the research is clear about is that fear-based appeals do impact political attitudes and behavior. A foundational study in the field, published by Ted Brader in 2005, documented the persuasive impact of fear-based appeals in political ads, showing that exposure to these ads changed how citizens made their political decisions. As this recent review of the literature indicates, fear and anxiety are connected with populism, which in turn is often connected with xenophobic and anti-immigrant politics. In a study of anxiety and politics,1 Bethany Albertson and Shana Gadarian find that anxiety over immigration increases support for more restrictive and anti-immigrant policies. They note, however, that while anxiety generally pushes citizens toward more protective policies, it also prompts them to seek out new information and reduce risk – it’s more complicated than people just reacting out of fear and panic. People who are fearful or anxious do look for reassurance and ways to reduce risk. But research on the topic suggests that these emotions don’t remove all reason or ability to weigh different considerations.
Fear will mobilize voters – unclear
The political psychology literature seems to focus on the mobilizing properties of anger, which might well be an emotion stirred by Trump’s anti-immigrant claims. Brader’s early study of emotions finds little evidence of any mobilizing effect for fear-based appeals. But claims that fear is especially mobilizing should be approached with caution and skepticism.
Fear-based anti-immigrant appeals undermine democracy – true
Moving a bit afield of the direct study of fear, political psychologist have devoted a great deal of attention to factors behind anti-democratic attitudes and impulses lately. Some of this work engages with dehumanization – both of immigrants specifically and of political opponents. Crime, in particular, can be tied to implications that the target group is “animal-like” or lacks human feelings of empathy or morality. These are old tropes. Lily Mason and Nathan Kalmoe connect this to what they call “moral disengagement” – attitudes that don’t come out and call for violence, but create space to tolerate it. Other work finds, unsurprisingly, that dehumanization of immigrants is related to anti-immigrant attitudes. And because of the linkages to populism and to anger, emotional appeals about immigrants have the potential to undermine the commitment to democratic values and norms.
In sum, there’s a body of research that suggests that anti-immigrant language, especially when presented in the form of emotional appeals, matters and isn’t just rhetorical window dressing. Recent polling data suggest that the repetition of Trump-style claims about immigrants and immigration have already made a difference in public attitudes, especially among Republicans.
Even though emotional appeals have both persuasive and anti-democratic potential, the political psychology literature also reminds us to approach these topics with nuance. It’s certainly alarming that a major party presidential candidate has chosen to amplify these kinds of ways of thinking and talking about immigrants – and the fact that it’s been going on for many years doesn’t change this. But just because Trump says something doesn’t mean it has to be political reality, and this is where the structure of the debate comes in: Biden, and the moderators can push back. The current tenor of the immigration debate predates Trump, but he doesn’t have to be the driving force defining what comes next.
My look at the literature left me somewhat unclear about the relationship between fear and anxiety, which are sometimes discussed together.