GUT-LEVEL EMOTIONS AND THE PRESIDENTIAL VOTE

Over the past decade, political scientists have with increasing freque ncy demonstrated that emotions strongly influence mass political behav ior. One shortcoming of this research has been the failure to distingu ish between fundamentally different sources of emotional response. In this article, I draw on theories of emotional response developed in so cial psychology to argue that emotional reactions to presidential cand idates are partly rooted in what people know about the political world (cognitively mediated emotion) and partly independent of political co gnition (gut-level emotion). Using data from the 1984 and 1988 Nationa l Election Studies, I develop instruments of gut-level positivity and negativity and show that these factors strongly influence the presiden tial vote.