Open thread for night owls: Does anger make you politically active but close-minded?

At Miller-McCune, Lee Drutman writes Anger, Politics and the Wisdom of Uncertainty:

In a recent Journal of Politics article titled ?Election Night?s Alright for Fighting: The Role of Emotions in Political Participation,? Brader, Groenendyk, Valentino and two other colleagues (Michigan political scientist Vincent L. Hutchings and Michigan doctoral student Krysha Gregorowicz) reported on experiments and crunched American National Election Studies data to show that when citizens get angry, they get active.

In an experimental manipulation, the researchers used ?an emotional induction task? ? asking participants to recall and write about an experience that made them either angry, anxious or enthusiastic. After the manipulation, subjects were given questions about their intention to participate in politics. Anger inducement boosted intention to participate by one-third of an act out of five possible acts; anxiety and enthusiasm had no effect.

Similarly, survey data on citizen self-reports of anger are predictive of campaign participation, whereas fear and enthusiasm are not. In particular, voters who report anger are much more likely to engage in what political scientists describe as ?costly? activities (because they require extra resources): attending rallies, donating money, volunteering for campaigns.

?Anger gets people engaged,? said Brader. ?There?s a tendency among scholars and others to say that things like negative advertising are bad. But our paper points out that negative emotions like anger can bring people out and get people more involved. So the consequences aren?t all bad.?

And Groenendyk notes: ?If anger is on your side, and it?s mobilizing people to get involved, anger can be a great thing.?

A particular danger of anger seems to be closed-mindedness. Research finds that when citizens get angry, they close themselves off to alternative views and redouble their sense of conviction in their existing views. Fear and anxiety, on the other hand, seem to promote openness to alternative viewpoints and a willingness to compromise.

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At Daily Kos on this date in 2007:

This is just pathetic.

The Bush administration spent much of yesterday trying to broker a graceful end to the ethics controversy consuming the World Bank, offering the resignation of embattled president Paul D. Wolfowitz, senior administration and bank officials said. But Wolfowitz said he would not leave, insisting on a measure of vindication.

It would be funny if it weren't actually the reputation of the U.S. hanging in the balance. Whether it's out of arrogance, stupidity, a total lack of self-awareness, or the combination of all three, we appear to be stuck with him.  Watching Wolfowitz and his buddy in tooth-and-nails perseverance Gonzales twist in the winds is fun for a little while, but dammit, isn't it time someone fired them already?

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/0ZL6QXZUY20/-Open-thread-for-night-owls:-Does-anger-make-you-politically-active-but-close-minded

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