29 October 2026 16:00 - 17:00

This event is both online and in person.

SAL 2.04, 2nd Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH

Online participants are welcome to join us via Zoom:
Please contact Lia Bergin (Communications and Events Assistant) l.bergin@lse.ac.uk to receive event updates and the Zoom link to the seminar.

About this event

In this paper, we document the rise of anger in U.S. political communication and study its effects on policy views. We combine online and offline data, including the full record of congressional floor speeches since the 1870s, tweets from members of Congress, tweets from voters matched to electoral registries, campaign speeches, and Reddit comments. Anger in U.S. congressional speeches has risen sharply in the last decade, reaching its highest level in a century and a half. In voter tweets, the share of policy-related sentences expressing anger rises 35% between 2013 and 2025. In tweets by members of Congress, the angry-sentence share rises by 72%. Angry tweets by members of Congress or by voters receive around 60% more retweets relative to tweets with no emotion. Our two experiments show that negative emotions increase support for protectionism, restrictive immigration policies, and redistribution. Positive emotions mainly improve perceptions and reduce support for populism. Anger also changes climate policy views, while fear has no detectable effect. Building on the ACTORC framework of Bordalo et al. ( 2026 ), our model shows how emotions direct attention toward different features of policy problems. Overall, emotions shape both engagement and policy views.

Participants are expected to adhere to the CEP Events Code of Conduct.

Directions

This event will take place in SAL 2.04, 2nd Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH.

Online participants are welcome to join us via Zoom:
Please contact Lia Bergin (Communications and Events Assistant) l.bergin@lse.ac.uk to receive event updates and the Zoom link to the seminar.

The building is labelled SAL on the LSE campus map. You can also find us on Google Maps. For further information, go to contact us.

This series is part of the CEP's Wellbeing programme.