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Extreme Political Attitudes and Emotionally Based Strategic Communications (EBSC)
Krešimir Ćosić, Armano Srbljinović, Siniša Popović, Ivica Kostović, Miloš Judaš, Mario Vukšić
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DOI:10.17265/1548-6591/2012.06.003
University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Collective and negatively valenced emotions, such as fear, anger, hatred or humiliation, may contribute to the emergence of extreme political attitudes and behaviours. We refer to the impact of negatively valenced emotions on political attitudes and (in)tolerance as the “toxic power of negatively valenced emotions”. The neural mechanisms and neural characteristics of extreme political attitudes and related negatively valenced discrete emotions are represented in changes at the biochemical and molecular levels of related limbic and prefrontal cortical structures of affected brains. We propose “dominant emotional maps” as a particular form of representing dominant emotions within a group or a population. The toxic power of extreme political mental states might be reduced by Emotionally Based Strategic Communications (EBSC) as a communication method for transforming negative dominant emotional maps into more positive ones. EBSC are conceptualized as the “positively valenced stimulation” of a negatively emotionally affected group by an appropriate communications strategy in order to influence perceptions, attitudes and behaviour of targeted group. We regard EBSC as potential contribution to a “soft power” approach to security policy and prevention of radicalized behaviours and action tendencies in afflicted societies. EBSC can also be viewed as a large-scale strategy of emotion regulation that might decrease destructive power of extreme political attitudes.
political psychology, radicalized behaviours, dominant emotional maps, strategic communications, neuroscience
Journal of US-China Public Administration, ISSN 1548-6591, June 2012, Vol. 9, No. 6, 637-653
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