This article by By Peter Rejcek is published by Frontiers Science News. Here is an excerpt:

Both Democrats and Republicans in US elections are more likely to be emotionally moved or angered by political advertising produced by the party to which they identify. This suggests that most ads today do little to sway the other side, but rather help motivate a party’s faithful to support a candidate through actions such as making a campaign donation or showing up at the ballot box.

While it may seem that the two major political parties in the United States don’t have much in common, the ways both types of voters respond emotionally to political advertising is very much influenced by their party affiliation. A first-of-its-kind study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, investigated this behavior based on short political video ads intended to either emotionally move or anger voters, with implications for how parties communicate their messages and spend their ad dollars.

The comparative study involved 146 participants who viewed eight videos from the 2018 midterm US elections – four each from Democratic and Republican candidates – with content explicitly designed to evoke either anger or kama muta. The latter is a specific positive emotion related to social relationships. It is similar to the concept of ‘being moved’ but in the context of intensifying or building unity within a particular community.

Read the full article here.