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Fear or Loathing: Affect, Political Economy, and Prejudice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2022

Stephen M. Utych Open the ORCID record for Stephen M. Utych [Opens in a new window] ,
Rachel Navarre Open the ORCID record for Rachel Navarre [Opens in a new window]  and
Matthew Rhodes-Purdy Open the ORCID record for Matthew Rhodes-Purdy [Opens in a new window]
Stephen M. Utych*
Affiliation:
Boise State University, 1910 W University Drive, Boise, ID 83725, USA
Rachel Navarre
Affiliation:
Bridgewater State University, 131 Summer Street, Bridgewater, MA 02325, USA
Matthew Rhodes-Purdy
Affiliation:
Clemson University, 232 Brackett Hall, Clemson, SC 29634, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: stephenutych@boisestate.edu
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Abstract

Ethnonationalist politics have been on the rise in the United States since the 2008 financial crisis, culminating with the rise of Donald Trump. We examine why two seemingly unconnected things—economic crises and prejudice—so often arise simultaneously. Combining theories of economics and emotions, we connect economic crises and prejudice through the role of emotional response to crises, namely anger and anxiety. We use two survey experiments in the United States to test various theories of how emotions might connect economic threat to negative intergroup attitudes. We find that economic concerns increase both anger and anxiety among individuals, but that these emotions have distinct effects on prejudice. Angry individuals show increased prejudice, but only towards groups one is ideologically predisposed to be prejudiced towards. In contrast, anxiety exhibits few consistent effects on prejudice.

Keywords

Prejudiceemotionspartisanship
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , November 2022 , pp. 505 - 525
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association

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