情感政治：美国国会中的情感表达与立法效能
Politics of Feelings: Emotional Expression and Legislative Effectiveness in the U.S. Congress
- University of Konstanz（康斯坦茨大学）
机构由 AI 辅助整理，请以论文原文为准。
AI总结：
本研究利用Transformer情感分类器分析1973-2024年美国国会170万次演讲，发现热情、自豪及情感多样性与立法效能正相关，而愤怒和情感强度负相关，揭示了情感表达对立法结果的影响。
AI中文摘要：
情感是政治传播中普遍存在的特征，然而现有研究主要侧重于描述情感表达的模式，而非考察这些模式是否与具有重要影响的立法结果相关联。我们通过研究1973年至2024年间在美国国会发表的超过170万次演讲中离散情感的表达及其相关性来填补这一空白。利用基于Transformer的情感分类器，我们测量了八种离散情感：愤怒、恐惧、厌恶、悲伤、喜悦、热情、自豪和希望。我们考察了这些情感如何随时间、跨政策议题、按立法者特征变化，以及它们与立法效能的关系。我们发现，国会的演讲随着时间的推移在情感表达上变得越来越丰富。情感表达也随政策领域和立法者的意识形态立场而系统性变化。值得注意的是，情感表达与立法效能之间的关系取决于所表达的具体情感：热情和自豪与效能呈正相关，而愤怒则表现出负相关。情感效价和情感多样性与立法效能呈正相关，而情感强度与立法效能呈负相关。这些发现表明，通过计算方法得出的离散情感测量可以为立法演讲的情感维度提供洞见，并促进我们对立法者在民主制度中如何沟通、互动和履职的理解。
英文摘要：
Emotions are a pervasive feature of political communication, yet existing research has focused primarily on describing patterns of emotional expression rather than examining whether they are associated with consequential legislative outcomes. We address this gap by investigating the expression and correlates of discrete emotions in more than 1.7 million speeches delivered in the U.S. Congress between 1973 and 2024. Using a transformer-based emotion classifier, we measure eight discrete emotions: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, joy, enthusiasm, pride, and hope. We examine how these emotions vary over time, across policy topics, legislator characteristics, and their relationship with legislative effectiveness. We find that congressional speeches are becoming emotionally expressive over time. Emotional expression also varies systematically across policy domains and ideological positioning of legislators. Notably, the relationship between emotional expression and legislative effectiveness depends on the specific emotions expressed: enthusiasm and pride are positively associated with effectiveness, whereas anger exhibits a negative association. Emotional valence and emotional diversity are positively associated with legislative effectiveness, while emotional intensity is negatively associated with legislative effectiveness. These findings demonstrate that computationally derived measures of discrete emotions can provide insight into affective dimensions of legislative speeches and facilitate our understanding of how legislators communicate, interact, and perform within democratic institutions.
