Political emotions shape preferences for leaders’ facial traits: anger favours dominance, fear favours trustworthiness

Abstract

Political emotions may shape not only which issues citizens prioritise, but also which social traits they value in leaders. Here we tested whether anger and fear elicited by real political issues differentially influence preferences for political leaders’ facial traits. A balanced sample of U.S. Republicans and Democrats identified the political issue that made them most angry or most afraid and then chose which leader would best address that issue using computer-generated faces varying in dominance and trustworthiness. Participants chose a more dominant and less trustworthy-looking leader more often when angry (49.5 percent) than when fearful (46.5 percent). Mechanistically, anger shifted choices toward more dominant-looking leaders by increasing reliance on dominance cues and reducing reliance on trustworthiness cues, whereas fear selectively increased reliance on trustworthiness cues. These findings show that issue-linked political emotions exert distinct influences on leader evaluation with implications for democratic decision-making and electoral choices.