Physiological Response to Political Messages

Kelsey Wright Author

08/02/2021 Added

6 Plays

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A research project aimed at answer how to individuals physiologically respond to congruent and incongruent political messages

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[00:00:01.260]Hi,
[00:00:01.800]my name is Kelsey Wright and I'm a junior biochem major at UNL,
[00:00:06.930]even though I'm a biochem major. I do all my research in political science.
[00:00:11.070]So this project is entitled physiological response to political messaging.
[00:00:15.840]Pretty much the research research question here was what is an
[00:00:20.640]individual's physiological response when listening to congruent and incongruent
[00:00:25.470]media messages, a lot of research has been done in this field prior,
[00:00:29.790]but none of it has been really at the physiological level.
[00:00:32.970]And most of that research has been more surveys asking questions and
[00:00:37.950]that kind of thing. A lot of previous research has pointed to the back that,
[00:00:43.350]um, individuals tend to have them much,
[00:00:45.690]much larger negative response towards increased messages,
[00:00:49.380]positive response to congruent messages.
[00:00:52.230]So this kind of leads to the phenomenon that people are more likely to vote for
[00:00:57.000]a party, not because they align with the views of that party,
[00:00:59.760]but because they hate the party, the opposing party that much.
[00:01:03.750]So say I'm a Democrat I'm going to vote Democrat.
[00:01:07.020]Not because I really liked being a Democrat. And I really liked those values,
[00:01:10.950]but more because I hate the Republican values so much that I don't want them to
[00:01:15.120]be, um, in office.
[00:01:19.050]So my biggest hypothesis for this was that we're going to find that,
[00:01:24.040]uh, at a physiological level, the EMT response,
[00:01:28.140]which shows the valence is going to be way more negative toward thinking group
[00:01:32.910]videos and positive towards congruent videos. Um, so for this,
[00:01:37.770]we did an experiment with 263 individuals.
[00:01:42.240]We want to do much larger study,
[00:01:44.010]but our lab was cut off during COVID and we haven't been able to have any
[00:01:48.840]more participants in sense because all of our participants are human subjects.
[00:01:53.910]So, um, 2 63 is the magic number for this one.
[00:01:58.740]Um, all of my different stats and stuff are under that method section,
[00:02:02.220]if you wanted to look at that. Um,
[00:02:05.910]so once we had individuals in our labs, we had them fill out a short survey,
[00:02:10.170]just kind of saying what their political views are, as well as some other, um,
[00:02:14.160]odds and ends.
[00:02:15.360]And then we hooked them up to EMG respiration rate and
[00:02:20.340]skin conductance,
[00:02:21.750]and took that over the whole course of this study.
[00:02:25.800]We had them watch 12 videos,
[00:02:28.020]five of which lean towards the democratic side,
[00:02:30.930]five of which lean towards the Republican side. And then two that were positive.
[00:02:35.670]They just sat at the computer and looked through all of them.
[00:02:38.430]They didn't have to answer any questions or anything as we went along.
[00:02:42.570]All right, my next column is results.
[00:02:44.790]So this shows some regression tables for the EDA EMG and
[00:02:49.320]RSA responses. EDA shows, arousal,
[00:02:54.150]EMG shows, balance and RSA shows emotional control.
[00:03:00.100]So for my hypothesis, I was looking really closely at that EMG data,
[00:03:04.330]trying to see what kind of balance all of these reactions had. Unfortunately,
[00:03:08.710]we were really, we didn't really find anything here that
[00:03:13.720]prove my hypothesis correct.
[00:03:16.810]Or supported my hypothesis. Um.
[00:03:19.960]The only thing that we did find was a slight significant statistical
[00:03:23.800]significance that, um,
[00:03:27.250]conservatives tend to be,
[00:03:30.790]have a more negative valence towards anchor messages than liberals have.
[00:03:35.740]Um, that has been shown in past studies.
[00:03:39.700]And we were able to kind of continue to support that here,
[00:03:43.060]but it was only slightly statistically significant the way more
[00:03:47.650]interesting results were found in the EDA and RSA response.
[00:03:51.520]So in the EDA response, that measures overall levels of arousal,
[00:03:55.720]and it was found that males have a way higher level of arousal than females do,
[00:04:00.280]um, while watching these political clips.
[00:04:03.310]And it was also found that people who are more politically active in their lives
[00:04:08.290]and answer survey, that they were more politically active,
[00:04:11.500]had a much higher arousal response. Then, um,
[00:04:16.240]people who are less politically, uh.
[00:04:21.280]Have less political participation. So then.
[00:04:24.370]Our RSA response, um, that one,
[00:04:28.360]the biggest thing that it showed was actually age.
[00:04:31.720]It showed that older people had way less emotional regulation and emotional
[00:04:36.040]control than younger people,
[00:04:37.750]which is saying that they had less control over their sympathetic and
[00:04:40.510]parasympathetic nervous system. I thought that this was really,
[00:04:44.170]really interesting,
[00:04:45.490]and to go into future research in this,
[00:04:49.570]I think going over that RSA response in older individuals is really
[00:04:54.490]where more questions pop up.
[00:04:57.820]I would be really interested in knowing if this is voluntary or involuntary.
[00:05:01.870]It's always been said that as you get older, you lose your filter.
[00:05:04.960]And I always thought that that was just kind of something people said,
[00:05:08.200]but we've found here that that actually might be kind of a thing. Um,
[00:05:12.910]this study by no means proves that at all. Um,
[00:05:17.110]but definitely raises some questions about whether that would be true.
[00:05:21.220]Of course,
[00:05:21.700]this was very strictly political science media so we can not make any broad,
[00:05:27.430]um, statements.
[00:05:29.830]The one thing that it did bring to mind is many of our Democrat
[00:05:34.780]videos were kind of smashing on Donald Trump because of various hateful and kind
[00:05:39.730]of random and bold comments that he said during his presidency.
[00:05:43.330]And he was one of the oldest presidents to come to office.
[00:05:47.170]So thinking through that relationship would be a really interesting point for
[00:05:51.220]future research. Overall, I just wanted to thank Dr. Kevin Smith, um,
[00:05:56.350]who is the PI on my research and Clarice Warren,
[00:06:00.340]who has helped me out countless times and is amazing.
[00:06:05.020]Um, and then thank you for UNL and you care for supporting my research.
[00:06:09.460]Thank you for listening.

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Physiological Response to Political Messages

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