The effects of efficacy and emotions on campaign involvement

The political relevance of citizens' affective judgments is increasingly be coming a target of scholarly inquiry. Marcus and MacKuen (1993) have demons trated that individuals' affective judgments enhance the efficiency of info rmation processing during presidential campaigns. Emotions, however, are un iform in neither their underlying processes nor their effects on political behavior. Marcus and MacKuen have argued that candidate-induced anxiety sti mulates political learning but not campaign involvement. This study informs the analysis of emotions and campaign involvement by considering the moder ating influence of political efficacy. Specifically, we demonstrate that in ternal efficacy moderates the influence of anxiety on campaign involvement. ' Anxiety among the highly efficacious drives involvement while anxiety amo ng those with low internal efficacy is of little consequence. In short, we find that the extent to which negative affect influences campaign involveme nt is conditional, at least in part, on individuals' perceived ability to s uccessfully undertake political action.