TY  - JOUR
A1  - Paulus, Frieder M.
A1  - Müller-Pinzler, Laura
A1  - Meshi, Dar
A1  - Peng, Tai-Quan
A1  - Martinez Mateo, Marina
A1  - Krach, Sören
T1  - The politics of embarrassment : considerations on how norm-transgressions of political representatives shape nation-wide communication of emotions on social media
T2  - Frontiers in communication
N2  - In this article, we hypothesize, and then demonstrate, that experiences of embarrassment have significantly increased in the United States, due in part, to the current situation in American politics under President Donald Trump. We provide support for our hypothesis by conducting both qualitative and quantitative analyses of Twitter posts in the U.S. obtained from the Crimson Hexagon database. Next, based on literature from social psychology, social neuroscience, and political theory, we propose a two-step process explaining why Trump's behavior has caused people in the U.S. to feel more embarrassment. First, compared to former representatives, Trump violates social norms in a manner that seems intentional, and second, these intentional norm violations specifically threaten the social integrity of in-group members—in this case, U.S. citizens. We discuss how these norm violations relate to the behavior of currently represented citizens and contextualize our rationale in recent changes of political representation and the public sphere. We conclude by proposing that more frequent, nation-wide experiences of embarrassment on behalf of the representative may motivate political actions to prevent further harm to individuals' self-concepts and protect social integrity.
KW  - affective politics
KW  - embarrassment
KW  - Twitter
KW  - Trump
KW  - social norm violation
KW  - vicarious emotions
Y1  - 2019
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/51678
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-516787
SN  - 2297-900X
N1  - Copyright © 2019 Paulus, Müller-Pinzler, Meshi, Peng, Martinez Mateo and Krach. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
N1  - Als Preprint erschienen in: PsyArXiv Preprints, 2007, doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/PK4HC
VL  - 4
IS  - Art. 11
SP  - 1
EP  - 9
PB  - Frontiers Media
CY  - Lausanne
ER  -