When hope is no longer enough: emotional ambivalence, digital exposure and the limits of the affective buffer against political polarisation

Abstract Political emotions are central to democratic life, sustaining civic engagement but also fuelling social division. Research has shown that hope and pride sustain institutional participation, whereas anger and resentment drive non-institutional participation and affective polarisation, yet little is known about what happens when these emotions are experienced simultaneously, or under which conditions hope contains the divisive effect of anger. This study examines five discrete political emotions (hope, pride, anger, fear and resentment) as predictors of democratic participation and affective polarisation among Spanish university students. Data come from a computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI) survey administered between 30 June and 24 July 2026 to 573 students. A moderated-moderation model tested whether hope buffers the polarising effect of anger and whether exposure to emotionally charged political content on social media erodes that buffer. The anger × hope × social media exposure interaction was positive and significant (b = 0.029; p = .006): under low digital exposure, hope almost entirely neutralised the translation of anger into polarisation (simple slope = -0.225), whereas under high exposure anger regained much of its polarising capacity even among the most hopeful respondents (simple slope = 0.279). A k-means cluster analysis identified an ambivalent profile (26.0% of the sample) combining high anger and high hope, whose affective polarisation did not differ significantly from that of the hopeful (p = .307) or angry (p = .113) profiles. The findings qualify the dual emotional pathway model and show that the civic value of hope depends on the media environment in which it is experienced. Framed within Sustainable Development Goals 10 (Reduced Inequalities) and 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions), the results carry implications for platform governance, media literacy and civic education aimed at fostering inclusive participation and reducing intergroup hostility.