Hot Contention, Cool Abstention
Positive Emotions and Protest
Behavior During the Arab Spring
STEPHANIE DORNSCHNEIDER
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dornschneider, Stephanie, author.
Title: Hot contention, cool abstention : positive emotions and protest behavior during the Arab Spring / Stephanie Dornschneider.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. | Series: Series in political psychology | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020030139 (print) | LCCN 2020030140 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190693916 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190693923 (epub) | ISBN 9780190693947
Subjects: LCSH: Arab Spring, 2010– | Protest movements—Arab countries—History—21st century. | Political activists—Arab Countries—History—21st country. | Democratization—Arab countries—History—21st century.
Classification: LCC JQ1850.A91 D67 2021 (print) | LCC JQ1850.A91 (ebook) | DDC 909/.097492708312—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020030139
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020030140
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190693916.001.0001
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
To Jos, Lexi, Svenni, and my parents
Acknowledgments ix
1. An Extraordinary Experience 1
2. Similar States, Opposite Outcomes: Egypt and Morocco 30
3. Identifying Beliefs and Inferences 50
4. Tracing Reasoning Processes 91
5. Hot Contention, Cool Abstention 104
6. Conclusions 134
Appendix 1: The Sample 147
Appendix 2: Beliefs Identified by the Qualitative Analysis 151
Appendix 3: Z-Scores for Each Belief 157
Appendix 4: Minimum Sets of Beliefs 163
Bibliography 165
Index 181
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am highly indebted to my interviewees and the people who helped me set up interviews. I would also like to thank Stefan Dantchev, who provided me with invaluable insight and guidance when I wrote the computational model applied in this analysis. I am grateful to the Swiss National Fund, the European Union, and Durham University for providing me with fellowships to conduct this research. I am grateful to Julia Cañas Martinez for helping me prepare visualizations of the reasoning processes, and to Mariana Saad for coding a sample of quotes to examine the reliability of the coding scheme. I am also grateful to my colleagues at the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin, the Georgetown Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth, and the participants of conference panels hosted by the American Political Science Association, the International Society of Political Psychology, the International Studies Association, and the Middle East Studies Associations for their helpful comments on various presentations of this research. I also thank the participants of a workshop on violent and nonviolent tactics at the Peace Research Institute Oslo for valuable comments on a related working paper. I thank Oxford University Press for the helpful reviews and smooth publishing process. I am especially grateful to John Jost for his great comments. I am also grateful to Abby Gross, Katharine Pratt, Courtney McCarroll, and the anonymous
reviewers, as well as Dhanalakshmi Narayanan, Gokul Mathiyazhagan, and Alisa Larson. Finally, I thank Riccardo Bocco, Martha Crenshaw, Marwa Daoudy, Jos Elkink, Jeroen Gunning, Miles Hewstone, Clark McCauley, James Piscatori, David Over, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and, last but not least, David Sylvan for valuable feedback.
An Extraordinary Experience
When President Bin ‘Ali fled Tunisia in January 2011, Leila1 did not know that mass uprisings were happening in a country close by. Like millions of Egyptians, Leila had never cared about politics. “The state was always watching us,” she remembers. “It was very bad. Politicians could have done anything—creating lies or arresting people. We did not feel connected to politics. We grew up without political education. We never participated in elections. We were completely ignorant, and did not even know the name of our foreign minister. The whole country was asleep.”
Leila first heard about the uprisings in Tunisia from a European student. “I thought she must be lying,” she remembers. “There was nothing on the news and nobody was saying anything.” When Leila got home later that day, she turned on the TV. “The Egyptian channel was showing a beautiful woman standing next to the Nile,” she remembers. But when she switched to al-Jazeera, her heart skipped a beat: Masses of Tunisians were celebrating the departure of Bin ‘Ali. “I could not believe it. It felt like a different world. I felt incredibly happy. My heart was with those people. I felt that this was very good.”
It would take Leila another week to understand that the revolution was also coming to Egypt, and a few more weeks to join the mass protests that were happening in Cairo. “My family didn’t allow me to go,” she recalls. “But I went anyway. This was a historic moment. It was very important to participate.” When Leila arrived on Midan Tahrir, President Mubarak announced his resignation. “It was like paradise,” she says. “I had never
seen Midan Tahrir like this before. People were offering me food, a child offered me an orange. I told them I was only there for the day and not staying in the tents. They told me they didn’t care, and shared their food with me anyway.”
In the Moroccan capital Rabat, Ahmed was equally surprised when he heard that mass uprisings were happening in Western Sahara, a disputed territory on the west coast of Northern Africa. “There had always been small protests of 20 to 40 people,” he says. “People were protesting against the corruption of the authorities, and demanding the redistribution of wealth, employment and housing.” However, these protests never spread: “They were always suppressed,” Ahmed remembers. “The mayor was ruling since 1977. He was buying people’s votes. By the time people showed up at the urns, the elections had already been decided.” However, this changed when a family got into a fight with the mayor at the end of 2010. Their quarrel sparked an uprising in which 25,000 people came together to protest against the authorities.2
Ahmed was living in Rabat and not aware of the uprisings. “The state was closing the area to prevent journalists from reporting about the protests. It was not allowed to spread the news.” One evening over dinner, Ahmed began to understand what was happening in Western Sahara. “My family told me about the protests,” he remembers. “I was very angry. Why had I not gone there to participate? I called a friend, and he told me: ‘It is very strange. Everyone is participating.’ Before, there were always a few protestors, but never all the people. Out of the blue, everyone showed up.” After receiving this news, Ahmed traveled south. When he arrived, he found thousands of people on the streets. “This was the real beginning of the Arab Spring,” he says. “It was incredible.”
Not only the people living in the Middle East were surprised by the uprisings. Around the world, observers watched in disbelief. “If there was ever to be a popular uprising against autocratic rule, it should not have come in Egypt,” el-Ghobashy wrote in 2011. “The regime of President Husni Mubarak was the quintessential case of durable authoritarianism.” Politicians had similar thoughts. The German foreign minister said President Mubarak was “a man of enormous
experience, great wisdom, and with a strong grip of the future,” while Hillary Clinton called the Egyptian government “stable and responsible” (Alexander 2011). British authorities considered Middle Eastern regimes so stable that their intelligence services were cutting resources dedicated to the Arab World (Norton-Taylor 2012), while the deputy director of the Pentagon’s chief intelligence arm said he had not been aware of signs that the Arab Spring was about to happen: “We missed that” (Dilanian 2012).
The Arab Spring also challenged a large body of theories on the stability of Middle Eastern authoritarianism, sparking debates on “Why Middle East Studies missed the Arab Spring” (Gause 2011) or “Why we were surprised” (Goodwin 2011). Numerous academics suddenly questioned the main assumptions of these theories, which had been developed over decades of research. “No question that none of its authors (myself included) predicted the fall of authoritarian regimes witnessed in 2011,” Bellin wrote in 2012 (143). Similarly, Gause noted (2011, 82): “I argued that the United States should not encourage democracy in the Arab World because Washington’s authoritarian allies represented stable bets for the future. On that count, I was spectacularly wrong.”
THE RESEARCH PUZZLE
What suddenly motivated millions of Arabs to mobilize against their rulers? This is the main research question I investigate in this book. A large body of literature has studied the unexpected outbreak of the Arab Spring. This research has examined the politics and structures of authoritarian regimes, such as the use of repression, the military, the security apparatus (e.g., Albrecht, Croissant, and Lawson 2016; Nepstad 2013), the organizational structures and methods used by the oppositional forces, such as prior protest tactics and organizational changes (e.g., Steinert-Threlkeld 2017; Gunning and Baron 2014), and social grievances of the people, such as poverty or inequality (e.g., Malik and Awadallah 2013; Acemoglu, Hassan, and Tahoun 2017).
Nevertheless, repressive regimes, protest structures, and grievances had existed in the Middle East for many decades without triggering similar mass uprisings. Moreover, the majority of people who had been suffering from poverty and repressive rulers for numerous decades stayed at home when the Arab Spring broke out in 2010—even during the height of the protests when millions mobilized. These observations underline the limitations of theories focusing on external factors. In response, I draw on the political psychology literature and investigate the reasoning processes by which people decided to participate in the Arab Spring. Moreover, I study non-participants in the uprisings and explore how these individuals made decisions to stay at home while millions of their fellow citizens poured to the streets to demand political change.
Reasoning processes are a focusing variable that links individuals to external structures. They shed light on differences in behavior that occur in the same environment, such as participation and non-participation in political protest. Reasoning processes consist of two main components: beliefs and inferences (belief connections).
Beliefs are “a set of lenses through which information concerning the physical and social environment is received . . . orient[ing] the individual to his environment, defining it for him and identifying for him its salient characteristics” (Holsti 1962, 245; also see Simon 1985, 298).3 Belief can refer to both “inner states as well as outer realities” (Jervis 2006, 642). Outer realities can include structures (e.g., political institutions, infrastructure, or social welfare systems), events (e.g., state repression, elections, or protests), or external conditions (e.g., the weather or a locality). Inner states can include emotions (e.g., fear or hope), political attitudes (e.g., support for a politician or rejection of a policy proposal), ideological orientations (e.g., liberal or conservative), perceptions of politicians (e.g., confidence or trust), or religious convictions (e.g., beliefs in afterlife). Beliefs offer an analytical framework that can capture different types of factors, which are usually studied by different theories. Adopting this framework promises to contribute knowledge about differences in behavior that cannot be explained by external conditions.
Beliefs are interconnected with each other by inferences. These interconnections are directed (“inferential”)—meaning that certain beliefs, called “antecedents,” trigger other beliefs, called “consequents” (belief → belief) (Axelrod 1976). Inferences between beliefs can in turn trigger decisions for actions (belief → belief → . . . –> decision). In the following, I trace how beliefs about certain factors triggered beliefs about other factors until it became possible for some individuals to decide to protest and for others to stay at home instead. This contributes new knowledge showing how some people mobilized for the Arab Spring, while others remained at home.
The analysis shows that decisions to join the Arab Spring were triggered by beliefs about positive emotions4 of hope, courage, solidarity, and national pride, which were themselves triggered by beliefs that mass protests were happening at home, that a revolution happened abroad, and that fellow citizens were sacrificing themselves. By contrast, decisions to stay at home were triggered by beliefs about living in safety, satisfactory living conditions, and state approval. Figure 1.1 gives an overview.
The analysis is based on the research design of a double-paired comparison of protestors and non-protestors from two countries with opposite protest levels and outcomes—Egypt and Morocco. In Egypt, the uprisings led to the departure of President Husni Mubarak, whereas the Moroccan King continues to rule until today (see Chapter 2 of this volume for a more detailed outline). To gain knowledge about reasoning processes underlying mobilization in these countries, I conducted ethnographic interviews. I also became a member of the main Facebook groups through which people mobilized in both countries and identified posts in which individuals commented on their reasons for joining the protests (“Kulana Khalid Sa’id” in Egypt and “Mouvement du 20 Février” in Morocco).
I proceeded by coding the individuals’ direct speech for the main components of reasoning processes—beliefs, inferences, and decisions. First, I identified beliefs by examining the propositional contents of each sentence contained by the interviews and Facebook entries. In this analysis, I systematically identified any factor mentioned by a sentence, including factors as varied as external conditions, religious convictions,
Self-sacrifice
Revolution abroad
Hope, courage, solidarity, national pride
Protest at hom e
Beliefs antecedent to protest decisions
Decision to protest
Satisfactor y living condition s Safety State approval
Beliefs antecedent to decisions to stay at home
Decision to stay at home
Social network s (Facebook, existing protest structures)
Relative deprivation (poverty, inequality)
External factors addressed by the literature
Authoritarian regimes (repression, military, security apparatus)
Figure 1.1 Key antecedents of decisions.
or emotions. Following the previously described analytical framework, I coded each of these factors as a certain type of belief. Second, I identified inferential connections between these beliefs (belief about factor x → belief about factor y). I identified inferences from linguistic connectors contained by sentences, such as “because” or “if . . . then.” Finally, I identified decisions for actions connected to beliefs (belief → belief → . . . → decision). I identified decisions from the propositional contents of sentences referring to an individual’s behavior, such as “I went to Midan Tahrir.”
This analysis constructed 121 systems of beliefs underlying protest decisions. This sample size may appear large in comparison with ethnographic studies, but small when compared with survey studies. Nevertheless, it constitutes a very large data set for the analysis of reasoning processes. Each belief system includes a great variety of interconnected beliefs. The entire data set contains trillions of combinations of beliefs and inferences—including beliefs about factors addressed by the mentioned theories, such as repressive state behavior, oppositional forces, and inequality, as well as a large number of factors that are not captured by these theories, such as religious convictions, family relations, or personal priorities. To systematically examine these data, I developed a computer program. The program systematically traces inferences that connect beliefs to decisions about participating in the Arab Spring and identifies key beliefs and inferences underlying these decisions.
THE MAIN ARGUMENT
The main argument I develop from the analysis is that decisions to participate in the Arab Spring were “hot”—meaning they were based on positive emotions of hope, courage, solidarity, and pride. By contrast, decisions to refrain from mobilizing were “cool”—meaning they were based on beliefs that life was safe, that living conditions were improving, and that the head of state was acceptable. These findings provide new support for the hot cognition hypothesis (Lodge and Taber 2005) and confirm the psychology
literature differentiating between “hot” versus “cool” systems of reasoning (Metcalfe and Mischel 1999; Kahneman 2011).
The findings also specify political theories that link protest behavior to emotions. Showing that decisions to join the Arab Spring were triggered by positive emotions of hope, courage, solidarity, and pride suggest that emotions can play a different role in mobilization than found by wellknown theories that have linked protest behavior to negative emotions of frustration (Gurr 2015; for related arguments on the Arab Spring see Lotan et al. 2011; Eltantawy and Wiest 2011) or moral outrage (e.g., Jasper 1998; Miller, Effron, and Zak 2009; for a related argument on the Arab Spring, see Preston et al. 2011). This finding also complements theories that have linked negative emotions of anger to collective action (van Zomeren 2013; Miller et al. 2009; Tausch and Becker 2012; cf., Van Stekelenburg and Klandermans 2013, 893), political participation (e.g., Valentino et al. 2011), and political behavior more generally (e.g., Huddy, Feldman, and Cassese 2007).
The findings are consistent with intergroup emotions theory (Mackie and Smith 2014; Mackie, Smith, and Ray 2008), according to which people’s emotions about their own and other groups best explain intergroup relations. The findings show that emotions of solidarity with fellow citizens, pride about their nation, hope that their efforts would succeed and courage to face the government were more important to decisions to protest against Arab rulers than any other factor examined by the analysis. The findings also show that positive emotions were themselves triggered by beliefs that a revolution had occurred abroad, that protests were happening at home, and that fellow citizens were making self-sacrifices. This information is not usually available from the literature exploring the direct link between emotions and political behavior.
The findings also complement the social identity model of collective action (SIMCA), which outlines the effects of perceived injustice, efficacy, and identity on collective action, including protest behavior (van Zomeren and Postmes 2008). In this model, group-based emotions including anger constitute “a conceptual bride” connecting group-based appraisal with action tendencies (506). For example, negative appraisal
of group-based deprivation motivates group-based emotions of anger, which in turn motivates collective action (506). Related research has also pointed to the role of differentiated emotions in collective action against the existing order. Osborne et al. (2018, 245) have linked positive emotions of pride about one’s leaders or political traditions to systemsupporting behavior. By contrast, negative emotions of anger, distress, and resentment about the economic order are linked to system-rejecting behavior (245).
The findings of this book complement these observations by showing that positive emotions about group effort against existing structures are crucial to explain system-rejecting behavior. The analysis shows that beliefs that people were rising up against their rulers and sacrificing themselves and that these uprisings were successful in a neighboring country triggered positive emotions of pride, as well as hope, courage, solidarity. These findings suggest that once system-rejecting behavior is visible, it can motivate others to join through particular positive emotions, adding to existing knowledge about the role of negative emotions of anger.
The finding that hope about the protests’ success motivated people to join the uprisings is also consistent with SIMCA’s emphasis of perceived efficacy (conceptualized via strength, a sense of control as well as effectiveness to change a certain situation; see van Zomeren and Postmes 2008, 513). The findings show that of the four positive emotions differentiating decisions of protestors from non-protestors, hope is related to the largest proportion of decisions by protestors versus non-protestors. Moreover, the analysis shows that positive emotions of hope and courage can themselves be based on beliefs about successful protest abroad.
SIMCA also highlights the role of perceived injustice, and the findings of this book are consistent with this focus. The analysis shows that beliefs about state crimes, such as corruption or censorship, are antecedent to a significantly larger proportion of decisions by protestors than non-protestors. Of all the beliefs contained by the reasoning processes, state crime is found to be the best differentiator between protestors and non-protestors. Complementing expectations from SIMCA, according to which state crime would be a trigger of anger, the following analysis
suggests that state crime triggers disapproval of the head of state along with beliefs that the leader has negative character traits.
This book also shows how protests can spread at the level of the individual, which complements existing macro-level accounts of the diffusion of protest (della Porta 2017; Saideman 2012; Buhaug and Gleditsch 2008). The findings show that beliefs that others are joining the protests can trigger beliefs about feeling positive emotions about the protest behavior and self-sacrifice of others, which in turn trigger decisions to participate. This information adds depth to studies examining the diffusion of protest across states by identifying mechanisms through which protest may spread in its initial stages of diffusion.
The findings about decisions to refrain from protesting speak to theories on system justification. According to this literature, individuals strive to hold positive views about the existing social, political, and economic structures and are reluctant to challenge the status quo even when it does not benefit them (Jost, Banaji, and Nosek 2004). The finding that non-protestors hold positive views about their rulers (state approval), believe in living in safety, and believe that living conditions were improving is consistent with these theories. The finding that decisions to stay at home were “cool” as opposed to “hot” moreover corresponds to expectations that “system justification alleviates emotional stress” (Solak et al. 2012, 17). Nevertheless, research has also shown that system justification “is observed most readily at an implicit, nonconscious level of awareness” (Jost, Banaji, and Nosek 2004, 881), which is not captured by data constructed from the direct speech of political actors. Studies of different data sets would therefore be needed to confirm the findings of the following analysis.
Research on system justification has also examined protest behavior, focusing on “system-based emotions,” which are triggered by aspects of the existing social, political, and economic structures (Solak et al. 2012). Examples of these emotions are frustration, moral outrage, and anger. Research in social psychology has shown that these negative emotions are motivators for collective action, whereas studies on system justification processes have shown that a “system-justifying mindset” can decrease both negative emotion and willingness to protest (Jost et al. 2012). The finding
that decisions to protest were based on emotions, whereas decisions to stay at home were based on safe living conditions is consistent with this research. Nevertheless, the particular emotions that are connected to protest behavior in this study differ (positive emotions of solidarity, hope, courage, and pride as opposed to negative emotions of frustration, moral outrage, and anger).
The analysis provides limited evidence in support of grievance explanations of the Arab Spring (e.g., Malik and Awadallah 2013; Achcar 2013; Joffé 2011; Campante and Chor 2012) and protest more generally (Gurr 1970; Davies 1962; Grasso and Giugni 2016; Rüdig and Kryotis 2014). On the one hand, a significantly larger proportion of decisions by non-protestors than protestors were based on beliefs about suffering from economic hardship. While contradicting the grievance literature, this finding is consistent with expectations from theories linking political activism to wealthy and educated individuals, who have more time and energy to acquire information about politics (e.g., Rosenstone and Hansen 1993; Finkel 2002). On the other hand, the analysis finds that beliefs about state crime, such as corruption or censorship, motivate a significantly larger proportion of decisions by protestors than non-protestors. This finding is consistent with the grievance literature, and specifies that protestors were primarily acting against state behavior rather than economic suffering.
HOT VERSUS COOL REASONING PROCESSES
The main finding of this study is that decisions to participate in the Arab Spring were triggered by “hot” reasoning processes, whereas decisions to stay at home were triggered by “cool” reasoning processes. Psychologists have observed such differences for more than a decade, referring to (1) intuitive reasoning processes that involve cognitive shortcuts and affect and (2) deliberative reasoning processes that involve cognitive effort. Some have called these reasoning processes system 1 and system 2 (Kahneman 2011), while others have called them the hot/cool system (Metcalfe and
Mischel 1999). My own terminology follows that of Metcalfe and Mischel, developed in the 1990s.
According to Metcalfe and Mischel, reasoning processes can constitute “a hot, emotional ‘go’ system” that is “the basis of emotionality, fears as well as passions—impulsive and reflexive—initially controlled by innate releasing stimuli (and, thus, literally under ‘stimulus control’).” Or they can constitute “a cool, cognitive ‘know’ system” that “is cognitive, emotionally neutral, contemplative, flexible, integrated, coherent, spatiotemporal, slow, episodic, and strategic” (Metcalfe and Mischel 1999, 3). Kahneman differentiates between the same types of reasoning processes, although his terminology refers to speed rather than emotions: His book Thinking, Fast and Slow explores “mental life by the metaphor of two agents, called System 1 and System 2, which respectively produce fast and slow thinking” (Kahneman 2011, 13). According to Kahneman “[t]he operations of System 1 are fast, automatic, effortless, associative, and often emotionally charged; they are also governed by habit, and are therefore difficult to control or modify. The operations of System 2 are slower, serial, effortful, and deliberately controlled; they are also relatively flexible and potentially rule-governed” (Kahneman 2003, 1451).
Despite applying different terms, the authors agree that there are two types of reasoning processes that can be differentiated by both affect and speed. System 1 is affective and fast, and involved in numerous daily activities, including reading words on billboards, detecting anger in a voice, orienting the source of a sudden sound, driving a car on an empty road, or understanding simple sentences (Kahnemann 2011, 21). System 2 is slow and not affective, and involved in more effortful activities, such as calculating mathematical task or finding solutions to complex problem. Kahneman gives the example of “17 × 24.” To calculate this, a person needs to engage in an effortful thinking that involves System 2. However, System 1 immediately provides a person with information about “17 × 24”—that it is a mathematical problem, that it involves multiplication, that that the person can most likely solve this problem, or that 12, 609 and 128 are implausible results (20).
Research in psychology shows that reasoning processes that are fast and involve affect occur very often and much more effortless than complex and deliberative reasoning processes. In the words of Kahneman (2011, 13), “System 1 is more influential than your experience tells you, and it is the secret author of many of the choices and judgments that you make.” The hot cognition hypothesis addresses this phenomenon by assuming that affect plays a crucial role in reasoning (e.g., Taber and Lodge 2016; Mittenzwei et al. 2016; van den Bos 2007; Lodge and Taber 2005; Morris et al. 2003; Redlawsk 2002; Unsworth, Heitz, and Engle 2005; Wyatt et al. 1993). Following Lodge and Taber, “affective charge” can be activated automatically when people hear about sociopolitical concepts that they have evaluated before (Lodge and Taber 2005, 455). Accordingly, “most citizens, but especially those sophisticates with strong political attitudes, will be biased information processors” (455). For example, Taber and Lodge show that “[w]hen reading pro and con arguments, participants (Ps) counterargue the contrary arguments and uncritically accept supporting arguments, evidence of a disconfirmation bias” while there is “a confirmation bias—the seeking out of confirmatory evidence—when Ps are free to self-select the source of the arguments they read” (Taber and Lodge 2006, 755).
These findings are in line with expectations from the literature on motivated reasoning, according to which “[t]here is considerable evidence that people are more likely to arrive at conclusions that they want to arrive at” (Kunda 1990, 480). Research in this field shows that “motivated reasoners may actually increase their support of a positively evaluated candidate upon learning new negatively evaluated information” (Redlawsk 2002, 1021). It also shows that even expert decision makers, such as judges, can be affected by “the same kinds of implicit biases as others,” even though “given sufficient motivation, judges can compensate for the influence of these biases” (Rachlinski 2009, 1195). In a more recent study of “[w]hy people ‘don’t trust the evidence,’ ” Kraft, Lodge, and Taber also observe that ideologues, especially conservatives, are consistently hyperskeptical about scientific evidence (Kraft, Lodge, and Taber 2015).
Psychologists have observed a similar influence outside the realm of politics as well. As Dan Ariely writes in his blog, “if we’re happy, we may be overly generous. Maybe we leave a big tip, or buy a boat. If we’re irritated, we may snap. Maybe we rifle off that nasty e-mail to the boss, or punch someone.” Other examples have included foreign trade exchange, or job seeking (discussed in George and Dane 2016, 47–50). Studies have shown that people who experience positive emotions are more likely to engage in risky behavior in foreign trade exchange, while people with less negative and consistent emotions are more likely to be successful in the job search.
Recent studies by psychologists have moreover raised doubts on assumptions that hot cognition is by its nature biased. In a study of hot cognition in major depressive disorders, Miskowiak and Carvalho (2014, 1788) conclude that although “[d]ecades of research on ‘hot cognition’ in MDD [major mental disorders] has shown pervasive negative biases in several domains . . . not all aspects of ‘hot’ cognitive processes are biased and distinctions must be made.” Neuroscientists have moreover referred to hot cognition as “affective cognition” and separated “disruptive affective cognition” as a distinct feature connected to mental illness. They also note that since affective cognition is considered to have multiple dimensions, there are no comprehensive ways to assess it yet (Bland et al. 2016).
The following study speaks to this literature by identifying hot and cool reasoning processes related to political protest. For example, the findings presented in Chapter 5 of this volume identify a hot reasoning process in which decisions to protest were triggered by emotions of solidarity with other protestors, which were triggered by beliefs about the government attacking the protestors. Another hot reasoning process identified by the analysis shows that decisions to protest were triggered by emotions of hope to be successful, which were triggered by beliefs that a revolution was happening abroad. Another hot reasoning process shows that decisions to join the Arab uprisings were based on emotions of courage, which were triggered by beliefs that other citizens were sacrificing themselves. By contrast, a cool reasoning process identified by the analysis shows that decisions to refrain from participating in the Arab Spring were based on beliefs that living in safety is a priority, which were themselves
triggered by beliefs that there were violent protests abroad while life at home was safe.
As opposed to the aforementioned literature, this study identifies reasoning processes from direct speech and investigates emotions modeled as beliefs, which are experienced consciously (see the section Beliefs and Emotions; also see Chapter 3 for numerous examples). Adopting such an “outside in” approach (Brader and Marcus 2013, 166), this study cannot add knowledge about unconscious affect or unconscious biases. However, it shows that people consciously experience emotions as part of their reasoning processes and that this matters to their decisions. This information is not available from the literature treating affect as an automatic and unconscious element of reasoning (see Kahneman 2011; Gigerenzer and Selten 2002) and confirms expectations from the literature on emotions.
Focusing on real actors, this study contributes to the vast body of literature based on experiments that have been conducted in the laboratory. Such experiments differ fundamentally from real-world settings in which political behavior occurs. Most important, real-world settings are characterized by uncertainty and potentially significant consequences for the actors’ lives. These characteristics are crucial and were enormously important in the Arab Spring, since protesting against authoritarian rulers involves great risks. This study shows that even under these circumstances hot versus cool reasoning was observable and could differentiate protestors from non-protestors.
“COOL” COGNITION IN POLITICAL SCIENCE
The findings also contribute to the political science literature on reasoning processes. This literature has mostly focused on the “cool,” deliberative system, which Kahneman calls System 2. The most systematic approach to study deliberate reasoning in political science is provided by rational choice theories, according to which political behavior is based on calculations of costs and benefits. Various applications of this approach address the research puzzle investigated by this book.
