politically triggered – A new study using body heat maps suggests that emotions triggered by political issues—especially anger and disgust—show up differently in the body than the same feelings experienced in everyday life. Researchers say the distinct bodily patterns may help explai
For many people, global politics doesn’t just stay in the mind—it climbs into the body. A new study suggests that when emotions are sparked by political issues. they can register in different places. at different intensities. and with different consequences for action than the same emotions felt during everyday life.
Manos Tsakiris, at Royal Holloway, University of London, puts it in democratic terms. “Feeling more is probably a good thing for democracy,” he says. “Feeling better is about first figuring out what you feel, and then the challenge is learning how to respond rather than react.”
To test how political emotion gets under the skin. Tsakiris and colleagues asked nearly 1000 people to mark on a body-outline diagram where they felt emotions including anger. disgust and hope. and how intensely. The participants then repeated the same task. but this time while reading words linked to emotionally laden political issues such as terrorism and crime.
The researchers turned those responses into a digital heat map showing where each emotion was felt, how strongly, and whether the bodily sensation was linked to feeling spurred into action or pushed toward demotivation and detachment.
The results generally matched patterns found in earlier work—that many emotions show consistent bodily activation or deactivation across people and cultures. Depression, for example, is almost universally associated with widespread deactivation, reflecting low energy and motivation. Anger, by contrast, tends to show up as a high-energy, activating sensation in the chest, head and arms.
But the study found important exceptions when the emotions were politically charged. Tsakiris says politically linked depression didn’t behave like everyday depression. “People usually feel that their whole body is deactivated when they’re depressed. but politically linked depression is more mobilising. ” he says. In that case, the sensations were more intense throughout the torso and limbs.
Political disgust also stood out. It registered as a higher-energy sensation across the upper body, unlike non-political disgust, which tends to cluster around the gut. When Tsakiris compared the two, he found a striking resemblance: “political disgust more closely resembles anger.”
Why political issues can shift the body’s emotional signature isn’t yet clear. Tsakiris speculates that it may come down to scale and agency—political problems can feel too large to tackle alone. “The sense of agency that we have in politics is quite different,” he says. “We cannot probably effect a change on our own. It will be a collective effort.”.
Lisa Quadt at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School. UK. sees a practical lesson in the findings. particularly for people who feel overwhelmed by the emotional churn of news and social media. She says. “We like to think of ourselves as rational beings. but that doesn’t consider how the body influences our decisions. behaviours and responses.”.
Quadt and her colleagues previously found that training people to listen to their heartbeat and other bodily sensations tied to strong emotions reduced overwhelm in autistic people with anxiety. Building on that work. she argues that getting better acquainted with how we feel might prevent people from getting trapped in emotional exhaustion—doom scrolling. despair. and avoidance. “We might indeed help to become less overwhelmed by negative emotions and perhaps then enable action. rather than avoidance. ” she says.
The study doesn’t offer a simple cure for political stress. but it does give a sharper map of what happens when politics enters the bloodstream. And if the body is already speaking. the researchers’ message is that learning to hear it may be the difference between reacting in panic and responding with purpose.
political anger political disgust emotion in the body body heat map Royal Holloway Manos Tsakiris Brighton and Sussex Medical School Lisa Quadt terrorism and crime emotion depression and mobilising anxiety overwhelm training