 Hi everyone. Today, February 21st, we explore anger and resentment and politics. Our speaker Teresa Capellus from the University of Birmingham in the UK offers us an examination of the psychology of what is often called the angry citizen. Teresa and her colleagues conducted research on 164 excerpts from interviews with US angry citizens and found markers matching the psychological footprints of resentment which you will share with us today. I'm Khodarik Silva. Let's talk about politics and governance. Teresa, welcome to our episode. Thank you for having me. I would start to ask you why is this topic important? It is very important for political psychologists because what we do, what we care about is really mapping the psychological content or underpinnings of political behavior. So as political psychologists, we are particularly keen to understand what it is, what is the psychology behind the phenomena that we see expressed in contemporary politics. So for us, labeling emotions with the appropriate terminology in terms of content, but also when we label something, we understand it as something as well. So allocating the right label allows us to understand better the psychological experience of the people that we study. So why does this have implications for electoral politics? It does because emotions matter for the way we make sense of the political world. When we think of somebody as angry, or when we think of ourselves as angry, we're likely to engage in particular actions and behaviors when we feel or think that somebody else is resentful or resentimental in this case, or anxious, we orient our political action and preferences accordingly. So this matters. Of course, and going straight to your article, when you started it, when you started the research with your colleagues, what were you hoping to find? So what was the research gap there? We were not trying to find something. We just wanted to be very careful in the way we map the emotional content of grievance politics that we study. There has been a lot of debate both in academic circles, but also in policy, public opinion, political actor cycles, about what is this dominant emotional environment that we are experiencing in this context of grievance politics. So a lot of it has been attributed to anger. The angry citizen does this, the angry citizen does that. And by naming it as anger, then we make particular assumptions as scientists about what that means for the psychological state of these individuals, but also where they can go with that emotion, what happens as a consequence. So it affects the way we predict behavior. If we miss label anger, if we misunderstand it, then our predictions are wrong. And the problem of that inspired this article is that a lot of our models that we're trying to predict political behavior in the last five, 10 years have not been doing very well. We have not been predicting electoral outcomes. We have not been predicting the way citizens decide on issues. We have been off. We have had instruments that were not properly calibrated. So for us in political psychology, the first thing to do is look at the emotion, the sentiment, the public sentiment. So we were asking ourselves, are the instruments we're using right. And are we studying the phenomenon we think we're studying the answer was no, when we collected the data. So we started from, let's say, a desire to confirm the status quo to just verify that what we had in front of us was indeed anger. With a hunch that perhaps it wasn't because of the studies in political psychology suggesting that reason to more resentment as you called it is a, is a separate emotional experience. And then we wanted to contrast these two and see which one holds water. Of course, so after this intention to mapping and finding out that the expect some extra expectations were not met. Can you let us know about the findings. Yes, so what we did in the study is we actually went in and we used interviews, excerpts from interviews that other colleagues have collected, because we wanted to be as far away from the investigation as observance as possible. Sometimes if you're contacting interviews and you have in mind that you can find something, you know, you kind of lead the respondents so we wanted to be very objective in a way external to the process. So we use data that is really readily available interviews of other colleagues and we coded them for expressions of anger. Versus the more complex emotional mechanism of resentment that has resentment resentment for your audience that has in it. Victim hood and envy feelings of humiliation, shame frustration, it's more complex and more passive than anger. So we were coding these excerpts of citizens that the actual interviewers had labeled or identified or wrote about as if they were angry, we were coding them for traces of anger as we studied them in the literature, and we were also systematically coding them for traces of resentment. And what we found is that the profile of those statements did not match anger. Instead, it had elements that you would not expect to see if these individuals were just experiencing anger. We're looking at the experience of it, not how individuals self identify because it is very possible in the context of what we call emotionology how we talk about emotions in the current political climate. These people see themselves as angry, but the deep bottom level of this effective experience did not match anger it matched the deeper, more victim hood centered more passive flavor of resentment. Well, and how can these findings impact I would probably say individual choice politically or in terms of public policy so how do the findings translate into real life situations. Yeah, that's a really, really important question because for scientists for as we want to be able to map but then also we want to be able to contribute to knowledge. So, when there's a couple of ways it matters a lot for political outcomes. First of all, political leaders political actors public policy officials that engage with citizens in this. For some of them frustrating environment of grievance politics where they see the grievance but they cannot meet the grievance they don't know how to address the grievance in policies. If we can inform political actors and policymakers about the content of these frustrations and we separate them from anger. We give them better tools to address them in the policy design and policymaking practices. Anger doesn't give us a lot of clues about what it is that that makes the individual behave it the way they do it usually links to a sense of injustice but beyond that it doesn't give you the complex emotional experience. But the reason to my sits on more painful, more bitter, more anti social expressions of what you would typically label anger so you can have pro social anger when you're angry about injustices than to you. But you go out and you want to demonstrate and you won't correct it, or you can feel resentimentful and in that context you would not go out and seek what we call pro social political action. Now, if as a political actor or a policy official you want to engage citizens more constructively in pro democratic politics, addressing that the deep felt emotions of resentment can help you then alleviate the frustration. Put them in a more constructive frame of mind and hopefully then more receptive towards the policies, but also establishing trust engaging with other citizens, not not being part of this anti social mechanism of grievance politics we want to be able to free people from the grip of resentment. So labeling it understanding it, making sense of it is the first step towards that. Absolutely. And having this findings and recommendations that you just give in mind. Let's look at the now what can you indicate to our listeners now what comes next in this topic so was something left to find. There's so much more to find so the data that we used were already secondary data data that somebody other colleagues have collected. So we are in the process of collecting more data now with interviews of focus groups to, to see to over broader range of countries broader range of individuals women as well because the sample that we had was primarily men, because they are this aspect of, you know, the angry citizen. So we want to see how this plays out in women, but also we want to look at it examining particular policies. We also want to be able to engage with experimental methods because what's really interesting in this process of recent demise when can it be flipped, can it be reserved reversed. How do you unscrew what we we use in the article a metaphor was like a court school that digs deeper in the psyche of the individuals that are involved. So can you reverse that mechanism and engage them pro socially and democratic politics. And how do we do that so stimulating positive emotional responses gratitude joy enthusiasm hope. Are some suggested theoretical, I guess, antidotes, but we don't know yet. So there's a lot that we need to find out. Of course, so in the future we are still looking at another form of collecting data, looking at gender differences other policies so we are still the tip of the iceberg. Well, if there is a tip of the iceberg, we actually have an iceberg metaphor we call it anger anger is at the tip. But when you dig deeper and deeper you see the psychological profile, and we just now want this iceberg to sell a little further so we can explore how it plays out in different contexts. Of course, I think it's very useful for this tip of the iceberg for researchers want to conduct at the work on this topic. So now, can you provide some additional resources about the topic that we have been discussing today. Resources you mean references and articles webinars and books so anything that would help our listeners to explore this topic as well. Anyone who is interested in hearing more about the emotionality of grievance politics is best that they engage also with the broader discussion of emotions not just resentment and anger. So the Oxford handbook of political psychology has sections discussions on emotions identity values and how they come together the Paul grape handbook of political psychology also gives us some really interesting insights about the emotional dynamics of contemporary politics with a few colleagues we have been publishing on recent email but also the way it links with political reaction isn't that a backward looking orientation that wants to restore the past. So, that's another publication group that people can be looking at and another angles that some fantastic colleagues at the University of Kent have been engaging with is collective narcissism. There's a link where we are looking at how reaction is a recent email and collective narcissism constitute what we label the antisocial triad of grievance politics that allows us to understand from many angles, how collective experiences come together with the values that individuals adopt the backward looking values that don't just want to preserve the present as conservative values but but want to turn backwards, sometimes violently sometimes urgently. So that's the second component and the emotional flavor of that which is bitter and resentment for and it has been victimhood as its core. And this is a really interesting tripartite relationship that can explain I think a lot of the experiences and the phenomena that we see in contemporary politics. Of course, Teresa, I always like to finish our episodes by asking you if any speaker would start listening to only now. So, what's the punchline of this conversation so what do you want our audience to remember from this talk. We have to be very alert when we identify anger in contemporary politics and we, it would be good for us all to reflect on the psychological essence of this experience and perhaps consider that it might be more complex, more deep or painful for the individual that experiences it rather than just reactive anger to frustration. Because in Taiwan opens up conversations that are difficult about shame, humiliation about repeated feelings of rejection that put people in a position of feeling marginalized and excluded, and they respond. So if we want to address the contemporary emotionality of the politics that we consider founded on grievance I think it is good for us to look at its emotional content. A good wrap up this episode is available on the let's talk about politics and governance website on cause you to use YouTube channel, as well as in podcast directories. Teresa, thank you very much see you in your next time. Thank you very much Rodrigo.