TO THREATEN OR TO BLAME: PERSUASION THROUGH DISCRETE EMOTIONS IN POPULIST COMMUNICATION

Abstract

This study investigates how different populist communication strategies elicit discrete emotions (i.e., anger, fear, pride, and hope), and then differentially influence an individual’s information accessibility, populist opinion formation and behavior intention. Combining insights from framing theory and previous literature, the study develops a typology of populist communication which includes four types: advocating, blaming, threatening, and assuring strategies. Based on this typology, a 2 (exclusive/inclusive strategies: threat vs. assurance) by 2 (anti-establishment strategies: advocacy vs. blame) between-subjects experiment (N = 290) was conducted. Regarding the effects of populist strategies on emotions, the analysis revealed that blaming strategy increases anger and assuring strategy increases hope. Advocating strategy increases pride, but only when combined with the threatening strategy. As for the persuasiveness of emotions, it was found that both anger and pride increase punish-related information accessibility and punitive intention. Both fear and hope increase representation attitude. Besides, anger also increases antagonism attitude, and fear also increases protective intention. More importantly, the persuasive effects were inconsistently mediated by anger and hope that were elicited by populist appeals.