New research published in journal cognition and emotion suggest that momentary emotional reactions interact with political beliefs to determine whether individuals can trust information. This study provides evidence that emotions of anger and sadness increase trust in political statements, while joy tends to reduce political confirmation bias. These findings highlight the role that physical and emotional responses play in how humans judge the veracity of media.
Information is more accessible than ever, but interpretations of the news are becoming increasingly polarized. Social media algorithms often amplify emotionally charged content, which tends to spread quickly and deepen political divisions. In such environments, people frequently encounter misinformation that is intended to provoke strong emotional reactions and manipulate opinions.
In psychology, confirmation bias refers to the human tendency to favor information that is consistent with a person’s existing beliefs. People easily accept ideas that align with their worldview, while often scrutinizing and rejecting opposing views. This pattern reflects motivated reasoning, a process in which individuals evaluate facts in ways that support their preferred ideological identity.
The authors of the current study wanted to understand how immediate emotional reactions can amplify or neutralize this political confirmation bias. They base their research on the information-as-impact framework. This concept proposes that people use their current emotional state as a mental shortcut to determine whether information is trustworthy, especially when the content is ambiguous or politically sensitive.
Marja Lisa Halko, senior lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki, explained the rationale behind the study. Her team wanted to understand the subconscious factors that drive polarization.
“Public discussions about misinformation and political disagreement often focus on reasoning skills, partisan bias, or how people are persuaded by political messages,” Halko said. “But politics is rarely just about facts and reasoning, and political news and information often evokes strong emotional reactions in people.”
She noted that researchers would like to investigate whether these emotions correlate with perceptions of truth. “We were interested in whether emotional responses were related to whether information was true or trustworthy,” Halko said. “More specifically, we wanted to understand how emotions shape trust in political information among people with different ideological views.”
The study was conducted at the Aalto Behavioral Institute in Finland and involved 62 adult participants. The sample consisted of 40 women, 19 men, and 3 participants whose gender was not disclosed, with an average age of approximately 32 years. Before the main experiment, participants completed a questionnaire measuring general emotional tendencies, recent mood states, and social and economic conservatism.
During the experiment, each participant sat in a private room and rated 32 short statements. These excerpts cover divisive political topics such as immigration, climate policy, taxation, and welfare. Half of the statements were based on facts culled from reliable news sources, while the other half were false versions created by subtly changing factual details.
The statements were also balanced, with half supporting conservative viewpoints and half supporting liberal viewpoints. Participants viewed each utterance on a computer screen for exactly 10 seconds. Immediately thereafter, they rated the confidence of the statement on a continuous scale from zero to 100.
While participants read the text, researchers measured their physiological responses in real time. They attached sensors to participants’ fingers and measured sweat gland activity, which indicates physical arousal. They also used electrocardiogram sensors to track heart rate and short-term heart rate fluctuations, which reflect emotional regulation and stress.
At the same time, the researchers recorded videos of the participants’ faces. They used specialized facial expression analysis software to detect subtle muscle movements. The software provided frame-by-frame estimates of seven different emotions, including anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise.
The researchers found that participants, on average, were more successful in distinguishing between true and false statements, and rated fact snippets as more trustworthy. They also observed a strong pattern of political confirmation bias. Participants were more likely to rate statements as trustworthy if their content was consistent with their political ideology.
Halko noted that the demographics of this group led to unexpected results. “Although our sample of participants was fairly homogeneous, and the stimuli were not particularly emotionally provocative and consisted only of short passages, we were somewhat surprised to see such clear differences in emotional responses and their association with perceptions of authenticity,” she said.
“Most of the participants were university students, relatively well-educated, and many followed political news regularly,” Harko added. “One might expect these kinds of differences to be even stronger in politically diverse or polarized populations.”
When scientists examined facial expression data, they found that certain emotional responses were associated with these trust ratings. Across groups, subtle expressions of anger and sadness were positively correlated with higher trustworthiness ratings. As these two negative emotions increase, participants appear to be more likely to believe the statements they are reading.
On the other hand, expressions of joy were associated with decreased political confirmation bias. When participants show subtle signs of pleasure, they are less likely to blindly trust information just because it aligns with their political beliefs. This data suggests that positive emotions may act as a buffer against deep-seated partisan views.
“Our findings suggest that people do not evaluate information in a purely rational or objective way,” Halko told SciPost. “Emotional responses can be associated with whether information feels true, and these associations can vary by political ideology.”
She explained that human reactions play an important role in cognition. “More broadly, this study highlights that emotions are not simply irrelevant ‘noise’ in political judgment,” Halko said. “They are part of the way people make sense of information and the world around them.”
To ensure the results were accurate, the scientists controlled for several other psychological factors. These explained participants’ general positive and negative emotions, interest in politics, and overconfidence in their task performance. The relationship between emotional expression and trust remained consistent even when these background characteristics were taken into account.
“This effect should not be interpreted to mean that emotions alone determine whether people trust information or not,” Halko says. “Political judgments are shaped by many factors simultaneously.”
“At the same time, our findings suggest that emotional responses are not unrelated, but part of a broader psychological process by which people engage with information,” Halko added. “Emotional reactions can sometimes reduce existing prejudices, but they can also widen the gulf between different political views.”
The authors note several limitations. “One important caveat is that this study examined reactions to short written statements presented without source information, which is different from how people typically encounter political content in real-world media environments,” Halko said.
“In everyday settings, the source itself can be an important part of the interpretation of information, but it remains unclear how source cues influence immediate emotional responses,” Halko said.
Harko also emphasized that readers should not think that emotions destroy critical thinking. “Another potential misconception is to conclude that emotions simply make people irrational or unable to evaluate information accurately,” she says. “That’s not what we found.”
Instead, she views these reactions as standard psychological functions. “Emotional reactions are a normal part of information processing, but they are often difficult to measure directly and are often not considered in research or public debate about political decisions,” Halko said.
“Or, more accurately, it is often said that someone is ’emotionally reacting’ to political news,” Halko added. “The reality is that everyone has emotional reactions to information, including political information. What’s more important is what happens from those reactions: whether and how those reactions influence judgments and decisions.”
This study was conducted in Finland, which is characterized by a multiparty political system. Because political systems vary widely around the world, these particular emotional and ideological interactions may look different in countries with strict two-party systems. Future research should apply this experimental design to larger and more diverse groups of people.
Halko detailed the team’s plans to expand its efforts going forward. “While our first experiment was purposefully designed as a relatively controlled baseline study, the next step is to study more ideologically heterogeneous populations, particularly individuals at the end of the ideological spectrum,” she said.
“We also plan to conduct our next experiment closer to the election period, when political identities, emotions, and media exposure are more salient and likely to attract emotion,” Halko said.
The study, “Sad but true: How emotions and political ideology shape information perception,” was authored by Marja-Liisa Halko, Juho Halonen, Marita Laukkanen, Henri Nyberg, and Mikko Salmela.
