EMOTIONS, ISSUE IMPORTANCE AND POLITICAL LEARNING

Theory: Theories about the effects of individual or group threat (larg ely psychological in origin) are combined with theories about the role of issue importance and of hope of success. Hypotheses: Anxiety, or t hreat, has an indirect effect on political learning (through issue imp ortance); the effects of anxiety depend, interactively, on people's ho pe of success regarding the issue at hand. Knowledge and importance ha ve a reciprocal relationship, the importance-to-knowledge connection b eing the stronger of the two. Methods: Two-stage least squares, using data from a 1990 survey on the linguistic behavior of young people in Quebec. Checked with an ordered probit and diagnostic tests. Results: Results confirm indirect, interactive, reciprocal effects. Standard (c ontrol) effects also found for education, gender, exposure to news on knowledge.