The curious, context-dependent case of anger: Explaining voting intentions in three different national elections

Collective action is typically studied in social protest contexts and predicted by different motivations (i.e., ingroup identification and efficacy beliefs, and outgroup-directed anger). Assuming that voting to some extent reflects a form of collective action, we tested whether these three different motivations predicted voting in Dutch, Israeli, and Italian national election contexts. Based on previous meta-analyses on voting and collective action, we hypothesized that identification with and efficacy beliefs regarding this party would motivate voting across the different elections (i.e., context-independent effects). As for anger, we predicted more context-dependent effects, depending on whether the anger is targeting the previous government or at the political system at large. Results were largely in line with predictions, showing the relatively context-independent motivational power of party identification and efficacy beliefs, and clearly context-dependent effects for anger. Specifically, we found little support for a similar motivational power of anger targeting previous government policies, but anger targeting politics in general demotivated Dutch and Israeli participants to vote (interpreted as an expression of political cynicism), while curiously motivating Italian participants to vote (interpreted as a desire for system change from “old” to “new” politics). We discuss these findings in the context of voting in national elections, and recommend further integration of the voting and social protest literatures.