Emotional Language and Political Aggression

We examined how leaders' expressions of emotion and emotion-related appraisals in their speeches were associated with subsequent political aggression by their groups. We obtained records of speeches anchored to identified acts of aggression and selected for analysis those speeches that were available at three points in time prior to those acts. We then coded the speeches for their expressions of emotion and emotion-related appraisals and tested the differences in that content separately for groups that committed acts of aggression and those that did not, which we labeled acts of resistance. Leaders' expressions of contempt and disgust and the appraisals related to them differentiated the two groups. We discuss the unique potential contributions of expressions of contempt and disgust to aggression and violence.