Literature on political behavior has recently been hit by the so-called emotional turn. Voting patterns, political preferences and, more generally, participation within the political game seem nowadays to be strongly influenced by how individuals affectively evaluate the situation at stake. This holds even more strongly for the literature on cognitive political behavior: emotional assessments of a given reality strongly affect how individual cope with information and how they build their opinion about the issue at stake. For instance, being presented with new information that elicits negative emotions (such as anxiety) might increase need for cognition and push citizens towards a more comprehensive research of relevant information. Quite surprisingly, however, almost nothing is known about how emotional assessments shape individual reasoning and judgement. Our paper contributes to filling this gap. We will explore the relationship between emotional evaluations of a given situation (climate change) and the respondents' stability and change of opinions on the matter. Our models are based on semi-experimental survey data, gathered in the French speaking Switzerland, that simulate the flow of political information and allow us to measure opinion stability and change. Particular attention will be provided to political sophistication, and its mediatory effects on the relationship between emotional assessments and reasoning.
