Emotions, Beliefs, and Policy Views

Abstract How do emotions affect policy views? How do they influence the way people process factual information? We address these questions using a survey experiment in Italy, which randomly exposes 12,000 participants to (i) sensational news about immigrant crimes, (ii) statistical information about immigration, or (iii) the combination of both. First, we find that highly emotional news stories significantly increase the demand for anti-immigration policies, while less emotional news has a smaller or no impact. Consistent with a causal role of emotions, this differential effect persists when we provide statistical information that holds posterior beliefs constant across the different news treatments. Second, we find that providing information generally helps correct factual beliefs, even though learning is slightly disrupted when participants are emotionally triggered. Third, we show that emotions strongly influence whether belief updating leads to changes in policy views. When presented alone, factual information reduces anti-immigration attitudes. When paired with emotional news, the emotional reaction overrides the effect of information, leading participants to adopt anti-immigration views as strongly as when exposed to emotional news alone. Once negative emotions are triggered, having more accurate factual knowledge no longer matters for forming policy views.