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Principal investigators:
Carly Wayne
Washington University in St. Louis
Email: carlywayne@wustl.edu
Homepage: http://www.carlywayne.com/
Nicholas A. Valentino
University of Michigan
Email: nvalenti@umich.edu
Homepage: https://lsa.umich.edu/polisci/people/faculty/nvalenti.html
Marzia Oceno
Vanderbilt University
Email: marzia.oceno@vanderbilt.edu
Homepage: https://www.marziaoceno.com/
Sample size: 716
Field period: 05/03/2016-07/01/2016
Respondents were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions, each inducing a distinct emotional state – anger, fear, disgust and relaxation (the control condition). The emotion induction task we used is a well-established procedure used to trigger incidental affect – emotion unrelated to the specific subject of interest (Banks & Valentino 2012; Banks 2014). Participants in each condition viewed an image of a woman’s face expressing a specific emotion, drawn from Ekman’s pretested archive of universal emotions (Ekman & Friesen 1976). Upon viewing the picture, respondents were prompted to recall life experiences that led them to feel a given emotion strongly, and to describe such events. Respondent in the control condition did not view a picture, and were prompted to report about “things that make you feel relaxed.” Note that, by design, this task is semantically unrelated to politics. This ensures that any effects can be attributed solely to a specific emotion, rather than a rationalization of pre-existing evaluations of the candidates.
anger/fear induction:
Here is a picture of someone who is ANGRY/AFRAID. We would like you describe in general things that make you feel like the person in the picture. It is okay if you don't remember all the details, just be specific about what exactly it is that makes you ANGRY/AFRAID and what it feels like to be ANGRY/AFRAID. Please describe the events that make you feel the most ANGRY/AFRAID these experiences could have occurred in the past or will happen in the future. If you can, write your description so that someone reading it might even feel ANGRY/AFRAID. Take A FEW MINUTES to write out your answer. Just start typing whenever you are ready and a text box will appear. When you finish typing, please use the mouse to click on [Save] and then press [Enter] on your keyboard.
Control:
Now we would like you to describe in general things that make you feel RELAXED. It is okay if you don't remember all the details, just be specific about what exactly it is that makes you RELAXED and what it feels like to be RELAXED. Please describe the events that make you feel the most RELAXED, these experiences could have occurred in the past or will happen in the future. If you can, write your description so that someone reading it might even feel RELAXED. Take A FEW MINUTES to write out your answer. Just start typing whenever you are ready and a text box will appear. When you finish typing, please use the mouse to click on [Save] and then press [Enter] on your keyboard.