Replication Data for: Disgust, Anxiety, and Political Learning in the Face of Threat

Emotions feature prominently in political rhetoric and media frames, and have potent effects on how people process information. Yet, existing research has largely overlooked the influence of disgust, which is a basic emotion that leads people to avoid contamination threats. We illustrate how disgust may impede learning, as compared to the more commonly studied emotion of anxiety. Disgust and anxiety are natural reactions to many kinds of political threats, but the two emotions influence political engagement in different ways. This study investigated the distinctive effects of disgust in a series of experiments that manipulated information about the outbreak of an infectious disease. People who felt disgusted by a health threat were less likely to learn crucial facts about the threat and less likely to seek additional information. Thus, disgust has the counterintuitive effect of decreasing public engagement in precisely those situations where it is most critical.

情绪在政治修辞与媒体框架中占据显著地位，并对人们的信息处理方式产生强效影响。然而，既有研究大多忽视了厌恶感（disgust）的影响——这是一种驱使个体规避污染威胁的基本情绪。相较于学界更为广泛探讨的焦虑（anxiety）情绪，本研究阐释了厌恶感如何阻碍学习过程。厌恶感与焦虑均为个体面对多种政治威胁时的自然反应，但二者对政治参与度的影响路径存在显著差异。本研究通过一系列操纵传染病暴发相关信息的实验，探究了厌恶感的独特效应。因健康威胁产生厌恶感的受试者，不仅更难掌握该威胁的关键事实，也更不愿主动寻求额外信息。由此可见，厌恶感存在一种反直觉的效应：在最为关键的场景中，它反而会降低公众的参与度。