Social emotions and the experience of politics in everyday life. Towards an interactionist theory of political behaviour and an empirical approach to study it

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Paul Marx
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 446148512

A large literature studies variation in political behaviour, such as voting, demonstrating, or discussing politics. While we know a lot about the correlates of these behaviours, the micro-dynamics that actually motivate people to engage in them remain a black box. The primary goal of the project is to advance our theoretical understanding of precisely this aspect. It does so by developing a theory in which the motivation to express political preferences derives from emotional dynamics in mundane micro-level interactions (or ‘rituals’). The second goal is to explore whether such a perspective provides empirical added value. The core (and novel) idea is that the situational quality of social interactions has an independent causal influence on political preference - as well as on the motivation to translate them into political actions. Theoretically, the project will propose a relational perspective that builds on Randall Collins’s highly influential micro sociology. The central intuition, which is supported by robust evidence from biology and psychology, is that cognitions, such as political attitudes, derive their motivational force from positive emotions that can only be generated in successful interactions. Such ‘rituals’ are theorized as the key relational mechanism underlying the relative importance of any cognitive factor for political behaviour. This addresses an important gap in existing theories, which tell us little about how voters navigate the multitude of values, interests, or identities that could influence their behaviour. Through explicating a unified motivational basis, ritual theory can integrate existing arguments into a more general and complete causal chain. This theory reduction is an important contribution to overcoming the fragmentation of existing approaches. The project goes beyond applying Collins’s perspective to politics by theorizing how political rituals are embedded in societal discourses and ideologies. As a result, it will deliver an original theory that gives justice to situational micro dynamics as well as to influences on the macro level.Empirically, the project strikes an innovative balance between a qualitative approach (that aims at a deep understanding of the emotional dynamics in political rituals) and a causality-oriented test of the effect of interaction quality on the expression of preferences. It does so by using focus groups as sites for qualitative observation, quantitative measurement and experimental manipulation of political rituals. The political discussion in focus groups will provide rich material for qualitative observation, but it will also produce transcripts and footage from which para-linguistic indicators of interaction quality can be derived. The indicators, in turn, allow for a quantitative test of the theory’s prediction. Finally, by randomly varying the composition of the focus groups, the chances for ritual success can be manipulated experimentally to provide an even stronger test.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Achim Goerres