The political is personal: The costs of daily politics

Abstract

Politics and its controversies have permeated everyday life, but the daily impact of politics on the general public is largely unknown. Here, we apply an affective science framework to understand how the public experiences daily politics in a two-part examination. We first used longitudinal, daily diary methods to track two samples of U.S. participants as they experienced daily political events across 2 weeks (Study 1: N = 198, observations = 2,167) and 3 weeks (Study 2: N = 811, observations = 12,790) to explore how these events permeated people's lives and how people coped with that influence. In both diary studies, daily political events consistently not only evoked negative emotions, which corresponded to worse psychological and physical well-being, but also greater motivation to take political action (e.g., volunteer, protest) aimed at changing the political system that evoked these emotions in the first place. Understandably, people frequently tried to regulate their politics-induced emotions, and regulating these emotions using effective cognitive strategies (reappraisal and distraction) predicted greater well-being, but also weaker motivation to take action. Although people protected themselves from the emotional impact of politics, frequently used regulation strategies came with a trade-off between well-being and action. Second, we conducted experimental studies where we manipulated exposure to day-to-day politics (Study 3, N = 922), and the use of various emotion regulation strategies in response (Study 4, N = 1,277), and found causal support for the central findings of Studies 1-2. Overall, this research highlights how politics can be a chronic stressor in people's daily lives, underscoring the far-reaching influence politicians have beyond the formal powers endowed unto them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).