Anxious Politics: Democratic Citizenship in a Threatening World

Monday, August 20th, 2018

Follow this link to watch Shana Kushner Gadarian’s presentation on YouTube.

The TR Site’s ongoing Speaker Nite series recently featured Dr. Shana Kushner Gadarian, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Her presentation, “Anxious Politics: Democratic Citizenship in a Threatening World” (based on a book she co-wrote with Bethany Albertson) looked at how anxiety about politics impacts political beliefs, actions, and decision making.   

Dr. Gadarian began her talk by explaining that the average person is regularly assaulted with magazine covers, news stories, and/or commercials that are scary. Whether it’s melting ice caps, terrorism, or infectious diseases, there are plenty of things that have the potential to cause harm. As if the regular reminders from the media weren’t already enough to cause anxiety, politicians often tap into these fears and expand upon them in order to win support. Political commercials and speeches are regularly designed to increase anxiety levels about a certain issue while also providing assurance that a particular candidate is the only person who can deliver a solution. One of the best examples of this kind of advertisement is the 1964 Lyndon Johnson “Daisy Girl” ad. The commercial begins with a little girl counting daisy petals in a field before a voice over says, “We must love each other or we must die”; followed by a nuclear explosion. The commercial was a less-than-subtle attack on Johnson’s rival Barry Goldwater and his willingness to use nuclear weapons. The commercial only aired once, but once was enough to destroy Goldwater’s presidential chances and everyone’s peace of mind.

It is important to note that the definition of anxiety used by political scientists is different than the one offered by psychologists. Dr. Gadarian specifically cited Michael W. Eysenck’s 1992 work in which anxiety is described as “[an] unpleasant and aversive state, rapid detection of early warning signals of danger possesses considerable survival value, key purpose of anxiety is to facilitate detection of danger or threat in potentially threatening environments.” As anxiety is unpleasant, people want to deal with their feelings, and that can manifest itself in several different ways. Dr. Gadarian listed three coping mechanisms that are particularly relevant to political anxiety. The first is political information-seeking, which involves searching for information that can be used to mitigate threats and protect from harm. In the political context, this is interesting because it raises questions regarding what sources are considered reliable and what experts people seek out. The second pertains to trust in government and the extent to which the government is perceived to be capable of handling the issue that is causing the anxiety. The third relates to attitudes about policies and political leaders, and how likely they are to protect from anxiety-causing threats.

One of the themes that emerged from looking at these coping methods was the notion of issue party ownership. Political parties are said to “own” issues if they are generally perceived to be better able to address them. Among the examples Dr. Gadarian provided were: immigration (typically seen as a Republican issue), terrorism (Republican), and education (Democrat). On many of the issues, party ownership doesn’t fluctuate over time. There are, however, a few exceptions to that. Most notably, “ownership” of immigration as an issue can vary based on sentiments and policy views. Ownership is important because when one of these issues becomes prominent, people look to the party that is thought to handle it better. This can also illicit positives attitudes toward the party and their policies even on occasions when those policies had previously seemed more extreme than necessary.

Dr. Gadarian demonstrated this point by discussing an experiment she conducted with a group of randomly-chosen individuals. After ensuring that outside factors like demographics were not contributing to pre-existing anxiety that would influence political actions, the individuals were separated into three groups and given three different news articles. Though smallpox has been eradicated, Dr. Gadarian and her team gave one group an article detailing a (fictitious) current outbreak of the disease. The second group was given an article about a smallpox outbreak that occurred in 1980 and was one of the last documented cases. The final (control) group was given an article on an unrelated topic. All of the groups were asked the same set of questions regarding their anxiety levels about smallpox as a threat, who they trusted to provide information about smallpox, and their views about civil liberties in relation to disease control. The groups had varying degrees of anxiety about the dangers of smallpox that corresponded to the type of information they had received. The group that was led to believe there was a current outbreak had the highest levels of anxiety.

Participants were then asked to select individuals or organizations they trusted to handle smallpox. Organizations like the CDC and the AMA were rated as highly reliable and trusted sources. Individuals such as doctors or friends in the medical field were also rated highly. Interestingly, the Surgeon General had varying results. In some cases, Dr. Gadarian had described the Surgeon General as a political appointee, which lowered confidence in the position; in other cases, if she described the Surgeon General as a doctor with medical training, trust in the position increased. Participants were then asked about restrictions to civil liberties in relation to disease control measures. The policies ranged from offering medical services to the collection and destruction of an infected person’s property. The group that had been given the article about a current smallpox outbreak had higher levels of support for policies that restricted civil liberties in order to prevent the spread of the disease.

While these results are striking, the nature of this threat made it fairly easy to evoke anxiety in participants. Outbreaks of disease are frightening, and few people need to be convinced about the threat they pose. However, Dr. Gadarian went on to discuss situations where the imminent harm was not as obvious. In these instances, politicians or political elites must work to convince the public that they have something to fear. Dr. Gadarian and her team conducted another experiment to study the impact of issue presentation on anxiety levels. Two groups of randomly selected individuals were shown the same political advertisement which focused on immigration. The only difference between the groups was that the advertisement presented to the test group had ominous music playing in the background. Remarkably, participants who saw the “scary music” version of the commercial demonstrated higher anxiety levels about immigration. Quite simply, the way the information is presented can influence perceptions of the severity of the threat. In this particular example, the danger of illegal immigration demonstrated in the commercial was designed to increase support and trust in the party that “owned” immigration as an issue.

Dr. Gardarian finished her presentation by connecting the two experiments she conducted to the larger political climate. The anxieties voters feel naturally and the anxiety voters are made to feel from the media, politicians, and experts in different fields influence how they behave politically. If voters understand the role of anxiety in politics and the ways it can be exploited, they will be more likely to seek out information from unbiased sources and make more informed decisions.

- Lindsey Evans, Public Programming Assistant

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Speaker Nite is part of the TR Site’s regular Tuesday evening programming, which is made possible with generous support from M&T Bank, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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