Polycrisis, fear and affective polarization in Germany

The increase of affective polarization in Western democracies causes concern in the political science community. Consequently, there is a growing field of research on explanatory factors with one avenue looking at the role of emotions. Currently, these studies focus on the effect of anger on affective polarization and find the expected positive link (e.g. Nguyen et al. 2022, Renström et al. 2023). However, the emergence of a political polycrisis (consisting of climate change, immigration and war/terrorism) makes citizens not only angry, but also afraid – which plays into the hands of populist parties. Still, how fear and affective polarization are linked is unclear: Renström and colleagues (2023) find a negative effect (i.e., the more afraid, the less polarized) which seems counter-intuitive but is in line with the expectations of the affective intelligence theory (Marcus et al. 2000). Contrarily, Yu et al. (2021) argue for a positive relationship since the unpleasant experience of feeling afraid will most likely be attributed to the political opponents and thus increase affective polarization. However, they were not able to show this effect empirically. The proposed paper aims at contributing empirical evidence to this on-going debate and therefore studies the link between fear of several political crises and affective polarization by making use of survey data gathered around the 2021 German federal election. References: Marcus, G. E., Neuman, W. R., & MacKuen, M. (2000). Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment. University of Chicago Press. Nguyen, C. G., Mayer, S. J., & Veit, S. (2022). The impact of emotions on polarization. Anger polarizes attitudes towards vaccine mandates and increases affective polarization. Research & Politics, 9(3), 20531680221116571. Renström, E. A., Bäck, H., & Carroll, R. (2023). Threats, emotions, and affective polarization. Political Psychology, 44(6), 1337-1366. Yu, X., Wojcieszak, M., Lee, S., Casas, A., Azrout, R., & Gackowski, T. (2021). The (null) effects of happiness on affective polarization, conspiracy endorsement, and deep fake recognition: Evidence from five survey experiments in three countries. Political Behavior, 43, 1265-1287.