1
Political psychologists have employed the concept of “threat” to explain attitudes and behavior in a
number of domains, though the definition and measurement the concept have varied considerably. In
addition, a growing body of work on the importance of emotions for politics has focused heavily on
anxiety or fear, which are considered emotional responses to threat (i.e., the feeling of being threatened).
1
However, these two streams of research often have remained quite separate despite the apparent
connections between them (Brader 2002). We hope to shed light on when and how threats cause changes
in opinion and behavior by bringing together the study of threatening stimuli, perceptions of threat, and
emotional responses to threat. We posit that all threats are not equal in their capacity to motivate a
political response from citizens. Threats are most likely to lead to attitudinal and behavioral change when
they elicit a negative emotional response, in particular anxiety and perhaps anger.
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SYCHOLOGY OF
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HREAT AND
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Research has left little doubt about the power of threats in social and political life. Threats have the
potential to increase intolerance (Marcus et al. 1995), activate authoritarianism (Feldman and Stenner
1997; Stenner n.d.), induce pessimism (Huddy et al. 2002), generate vigilance (Green, Williams, and
Davidson 2003; Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen 2000), facilitate substantial attitude change (Brader
forthcoming; Hovland, Janis, and Kelley 1953; Kinder and D’Ambrosio 2000; Way and Masters 1996),
and motivate political action (Brader n.d.; Campbell 2003; Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen 2000; Miller
and Krosnick 2004).
2
Some of these conclusions are based on demonstrations of the impact of threat-
related stimuli, while others are based on the impact of perceptions or feelings of threat. Few studies
document the full path from (a) a threatening message to (b) the perception or feeling of being threatened
to (c) a change in attitudes or behavior. Survey studies that focus entirely on self-reports to test the
second causal link (i.e., b → c) often cannot say how much people are responding to the world around
1
We use the terms anxiety and fear interchangeably in this paper.
2
Scholarship on the effects of threat is undergirded by the broader recognition that individuals tend to weigh
negative information more heavily than positive information (Cacioppo, Gardner, and Bernston 1997; Holbrook et al.
2001) and that they are more sensitive to losses than to gains (Kahneman and Tversky 1979; McDermott 2004).
Convention