Politics of Feelings: Emotional Expression and Legislative Effectiveness in the U.S. Congress
Emotions are a pervasive feature of political communication, yet existing research has focused primarily on describing patterns of emotional expression rather than examining whether they are associated with consequential legislative outcomes. We address this gap by investigating the expression and correlates of discrete emotions in more than 1.7 million speeches delivered in the U.S. Congress between 1973 and 2024. Using a transformer-based emotion classifier, we measure eight discrete emotions: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, joy, enthusiasm, pride, and hope. We examine how these emotions vary over time, across policy topics, legislator characteristics, and their relationship with legisla...
| Authors | Segun Aroyehun |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 9 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 9 September 2026 |
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