The Effect of Image-Induced Emotional State on Political Ideology

In many ways, emotions affect one’s day-to-day considerations and actions. Does a mood or feeling caused by something unrelated to politics affect a person’s considerations about politics? This paper aims to show how non-political emotions can sway a person’s ideology, at least to a small extent. Through the use of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, the full survey discussed in this paper examines how 1800 people respond to questions related to their political ideology after being shown an image intended to induce a particular emotion.