The emotional construction of citizens towards political leaders: Spanish General Elections November 2019
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Abstract
The growing political polarisation, the rise of extreme right-wing parties and the Catalan crisis are just some of the most recent examples in which we can observe the now unquestionable role of emotions in our political reality. The development of political psychology has led to emotions being interpreted as another explanatory variable of political behaviour. However, the influence of this dominance of the psychological perspective has been reflected in a basically individual and reactive concept of emotion. We wonder if this approach to the complex relationship between politics and emotions is the most appropriate. Here we seek to bring back some of the key ideas of the constructivist view of emotions and combine them with contemporary analysis of emotions. We approach emotions as the phenomenon to be explained and identify the shaping elements of the emotional construction. We present four structural equation models where we test the elements proposed here as constitutive of emotion. The emotions analysed (hate and fear) will be those directed towards the two main political leaders (Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Casado) in the context following the Spanish General Elections of 10 November 2019.
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