Moral panic and confirmation bias: understand the use of emotions in elections

​Political marketing experts have long known that feelings cannot be pushed aside in an attempt to win the voter vote.

Therefore, strategically, the communication made by the candidates mixes affections, going from fear to hope, thus trying to connect with the beliefs of the population.

With Bolsonarism and the proliferation of fake news on social media, concepts such as moral panic and confirmation bias are used to understand the various impacts of this discourse.

Understand the use of emotions in campaigns:

How do emotions appear in politics and election campaigns?

A subject of studies since the late 19th century, the use of emotions in politics is highlighted with works on Nazism and fascism in the mid-20th century.

Resentment has been the most researched affection, where a group or an individual is treated as the reason for the suffering of several, explains the doctor in psychology and professor at UFMG Marco Aurélio Máximo.

“More than rational speeches, detailed government proposals, political mobilization is very close to emotions. It is an affective mobilization.”

Political scientist Antônio Lavareda, from Ipespe (Institute of Social, Political and Economic Research) and author of the book “Hidden Emotions and Electoral Strategies”, says that of the 8 post-redemocratization presidential elections, 3 were in 1989, 2002 and 2018 – were critical elections, as they took place in a context of economic crisis, high ideological polarization and the emergence of outsiders.

“In all these moments, anger and indignation played a special role in the menu of emotions that predominated and that were used by the successful campaigns.”

Thus, Fernando Collor arrived at Planalto after mobilizing anger and indignation against the economic scenario and fear regarding the PT and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, says Lavareda.

Fear was also used by the PSDB in 2002, but Lula won with a speech in which enthusiasm, hope, as well as anger and indignation with Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s second term predominated, he analyzes.

In 2018, Lava Jato and impeachment were factors that worsened the scenario and contributed to the then federal deputy Jair Bolsonaro, who posed as an outsider, to come to power, concludes Lavareda.

Researcher at FGV’s Cepesp and author of “Quem Bate Perde? The Affective Effects of TV Election Spots in Brazil”, Jairo Pimentel says that neuroscience studies show that reason and emotion are associated in the decision-making process, such as the definition of the vote.

“There are voters who are impacted by short-term factors and may feel some anxiety, in the sense that a negative feeling takes over the person and they want to look for more information to decide the vote and this decision is usually later”, he says, citing Marcus Mackuen’s theory of affective intelligence.

Pimentel also highlights Ted Brader’s “Campaigning for Hearts and Minds” on how the use of elements in communication, such as music and interaction with children, activate positive emotions and make people more predisposed to listen to the candidate.

What is moral panic and how does it appear in Bolsonaro’s 2018 speech?

Created in the 1970s in sociology, the concept is defined by Stanley Cohen as the appearance of a condition, episode, person or group as a threat to social values. This mobilization is common in times of crisis.

Anthropologist Isabela Kalil, coordinator of the Observatório da Extrema Direita and the sociology and politics course at the Fundação Escola de Sociologia e Política de São Paulo, says that Bolsonaro uses the concept from issues related to gender and sexuality.

“If a decision is made by a certain candidate, there will be an early sexualization of children in childhood, so I have school-age children and that worries me.”

Sociologist Esther Solano, a professor at Unifesp who also studies Bolsonarist groups, adds that this rhetoric is an X-ray of people’s fears.

“The far right takes the foundational elements of conservative logic — family, sexuality, childhood — and turns it into an ecosystem that is under threat. under threat”, he says.

What is confirmation bias and how does it help explain belief in fake news?

Confirmation bias is the predisposition to believe content that is in accordance with personal beliefs. The concept was already described in the 17th century by Francis Bacon and was widely used within areas of psychology in the 1960s and 1970s.

Camilo Aggio, professor and researcher in the department of social communication at UFMG, who researches relationships between conspiracy theories and social networks, says that the concept contradicts the thought that people are vulnerable to communication.

“We seek information that will reinforce our previous beliefs, in the same way that we tend to discard information that confronts our beliefs and this is called cognitive dissonance.”

“Through the propagation of fake news, what you achieve is to produce public tension on an issue. It is not that you will be able to manipulate minds and hearts, but you will guide an agenda of discussions”, he says.

As an example, he recalls that in 2018, while PT Fernando Haddad’s campaign was concerned with denying rumors about “the dick bottle”, Bolsonaro’s had already guided a moralistic discussion about values, customs and education.

Aggio points out that, because of this, it is necessary to be aware of the emergence of conspiracy theories, identify their sources and deny them at the beginning to minimize their effects.

How do the speeches of Bolsonaro, Lula and other presidential candidates focus on emotions in the 2022 elections?

Lavareda says that the economic crisis is the main mobilizer of anxiety in the population and this produces misalignment in relation to the last election.

Although Bolsonaro works with the same anger and indignation against corruption and morality, they no longer have the same effect, as the voter knows that the economy and inflation have to do with the president.

“You have indignation about mobility issues and fear about communism [do lado de Bolsonaro] versus anxiety about the economy, Sebastianist enthusiasm for the return of what would be the good times and anger towards Bolsonaro [do lado de Lula]”, it says.

Sebastianism is the name given to the belief in the return of Dom Sebastião, king of Portugal who died at the age of 24 in the battle of Alcácer Quibir, in 1578, and whose body was never found. From the episode, the country went into decline, which fueled faith in the triumphant return of Sebastião and Portugal as an empire.

Psychoanalyst Christian Dunker, a professor at the Institute of Psychology at USP, also sees a use of positive emotions, such as hope, in the Lula campaign, while Bolsonaro continues to mobilize negative affections, for which people began to show fatigue.

“People can hate to positionally transform a situation, but they will resist having a life organized by hate. It will be difficult to maintain that in the medium and long term”, he says.

“It’s not just hate speech, it’s hate speech that moves from aggression to violence,” he adds.

For Dunker, Ciro Gomes (PDT) follows an intermediate path, trying to be aggressive without being violent. “He doesn’t always end up being happy with this strategy, because the intention is to beat Bolsonarismo and Lulismo and win a third position.”

Kalil (Fesp), who conducts a survey with undecided voters, sees the attacks on electronic voting machines, carried out with less intensity in 2018 and which now impact even non-bolsonarists, as a novelty in the Bolsonarista discourse.

“The allegation of electoral fraud has wreaked havoc on Brazilian democracy that perhaps it will take us some time to measure and realize how serious this disbelief in the electoral system is.”

How might voters’ mental health be impacted?

Raphael Boechat Barros, a psychiatrist and professor at UnB (University of Brasília), says that in 2018 he had depressive patients because of politics and that the candidates’ speech four years later remains much more emotional than technical. However, he claims that this is not noticed.

“That’s the problem. Most people don’t realize it. When they do, they’re already in great pain because of it, because they’re so involved. It’s almost as if they’re numb from a drug.”