Esveld, Anniek van (2022) The Impact of Gratitude and Anger Expression by Refugees on American’s Support for Political Policies Regarding Refugees. Master thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
In the ongoing Mexico-United States border crisis, refugees from Central America are fleeing their countries and seeking asylum in the USA. They suffer from danger in their refuge-seeking journey, and they need help in order to change their bad situation. Refugees may try to share their experience, hoping to increase awareness and understanding among US citizens. The question is whether emotional expression by refugees can influence US citizens. We studied the effect of emotional expression of gratitude and anger by refugees on US citizens’ support for political policies in favor of refugees, and whether this effect was influenced by political orientation. We used an experiment (N = 696) to manipulate whether refugees expressed no emotion, anger or gratitude when sharing their experience, while we accounted for the moderating effect of the citizens’ political orientation. Our results show that the support for political policies in favor of refugees was not influenced when gratitude was expressed by refugees, and that it actually decreased when anger was expressed. Moreover, we found that these results were equal for left winged participants and right winged participants, that is, we did not identify political orientation as a moderator of the effect of emotional expression on support for refugees. To conclude, emotional expressions by refugees about their treatment can influence how much support US citizens show for political policies in favor of refugees. Keywords: emotional expression, Mexico-US border crisis, refugees, policy support, political orientation
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
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| Supervisor name: | Gordijn, E.H. and Gootjes, F.C. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | Applied Social Psychology (ASP) [Master Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Jul 2022 07:21 |
| Last Modified: | 07 Jul 2022 07:21 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/766 |
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