Emotions, Gender and Information Processing

According to a growing literature, anxiety prompts citizens to pay closer attention to information about politics when faced with a threatening situation. However, few studies on the relevance of emotions have tackled the impact of gender, despite the persistent gender gap in political knowledge. In an experimental study, we manipulate news content about violence to explore the effects of emotions and gender on information processing and learning. We predict that respondents made anxious by information on violent crime are more likely to remember what they have read, consult more articles, and be drawn to articles with a negative angle. We expect that women will feel greater anxiety when exposed to information about domestic violence against women. Yet, anxiety may not translate into the expected processing pattern if women also feel angry and support punitive policies, suggesting that the control appraisal dimension of emotions plays an important role.