The limits of appraisals theory for political emotions Evidence from two U.S. surveys

Emotions, such as anger and anxiety, play a central role in political behavior and are extensively studied by political scientists. However, political science has largely adopted psychological theories of emotions without testing their core assumptions in political contexts. In this paper, we focus on appraisal theory and test whether emotions in response to political events follow distinct appraisal patterns and whether the underlying theoretical models accurately predict emotions in political contexts. Across two surveys, participants recalled emotional experiences from either the general or political domain, labeled their emotions, and rated the event along 18 appraisal dimensions. We trained several models to predict emotion families based on the reported appraisals. In the general domain, discrete emotions have distinct appraisal profiles and we can predict them based on the reported appraisals with high accuracy. In the political domain, negative emotion families (anger, anxiety, despair, guilt) have overlapping appraisal profiles, and models perform consistently worse when predicting these emotions. Our findings challenge the assumption that emotions function similarly in political and general domains and suggest that appraisal-based models do not consistently capture political emotions. To understand how emotions arise in response to politics, we need theoretical frameworks that account for these contextual differences.