How Emotional Displays of Political Leaders Shape Citizen Attitudes: The Case of German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Abstract

The personalised format of TV broadcasts and more recently the self-presentation on social media platforms are seen by some scholars as enhancing the role of political leaders on public opinion formation. The visibility of their emotional displays could further shape citizen attitudes towards political leaders. As demonstrated by some empirical studies, American presidents often succeeded in improving their approval ratings by displaying positive emotions, but lost support when sending negative emotional messages. This article examines whether similar processes of emotional contagion occur in the different institutional and cultural setting of Germany. It analyses whether positive and negative emotional displays of German Chancellor Angela Merkel change the assessment of her general and specific leadership qualities among the recipients. Although the data largely support the assumption of a positive contagion, they also show that these effects are mainly limited to Merkel’s general evaluation and likeability ratings, but do not strongly pertain to the assessment of her performance, strength as a political leader and trust in her. Moreover, as demonstrated by a variation of the experimental setting, emotional contagion depends on the political context such as the co-appearing political opponents.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Lena Masch is research associate and lecturer at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Her main research interests are political psychology and voting behaviour.

Oscar W. Gabriel is professor emeritus at the University Stuttgart and principal investigator of the DFG-sponsored research project “The Impact of Emotions on Political Judgements”.

ORCID

Lena Masch http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8967-3807

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.