Political communication scholars aim to understand the effect of messages on political attitudes and behavior. Past scholarship has identified three sources of influence in forming attitudes and behavior: affective, cognitive, and personality factors. While much attention has been paid to the impact of each single factor, little research has attempted to integrate them. Using the Affective Intelligence model as a theoretical point of departure (Marcus, & MacKuen, 1993; Marcus et al., 2000), this dissertation explored the simultaneous--and, in some cases, interactive relationships--between these attitudinal and behavioral influences. An experiment was conducted to answer three questions: first, do the causal claims made by Marcus and colleagues regarding the impact of emotion on political attitudes and behavior hold-up outside the realm of survey research? Second, what role does cognitive appraisals of messages play in the political persuasion process? Finally, does political efficacy moderate the relationships between induced emotional response, cognitive appraisals of messages, and political attitudes and behavior? Alternatively stated, does political efficacy link these factors together?The results of this study should be carefully interpreted as the causal instrument underlying manipulated attitudes was not transparent. The desired experimental manipulation--induced anxiety--was not unidimensional. While inductions did induce negative affect, they simultaneously induced positive affect. Within the confines of this document, this result is discussed at length and numerous possible explanations are offered.Structural equation modeling indicated that affect had a small impact on political attitudes and behavior. Likewise, the impact of cognitive appraisals of messages on attitudes and behavior was small. Alternatively, internal efficacy had a substantial main effect--not an interactive effect--on political attitudes and behavior.In summary, the results demonstrated the power of personality in predicting political attitudes and behavior. By trait, some individuals are more politically efficacious than others. Those with higher levels of internal efficacy tended to identify experimental messages as relevant to the attitudes they held, indicating that confidence in one's ability to comprehend politics and understand political happenings leads to identifying message content as applicable or appropriate. Additionally, these same individuals were likely to seek out more information about politics.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Computer Science / William H. Hsu / The contribution of the proposed dissertation is the application of affective intelligence in human-developed spaces where people live, work, and recreate daily, also known as built environments. Built environments have been known to influence and impact individual affective responses. The implications of built environments on human well-being and mental health necessitate the need to develop new metrics to measure and detect how humans respond subjectively in built environments. Detection of arousal in built environments given biometric data and environmental characteristics via a machine learning-centric approach provides a novel and new capability to measure human responses to built environments. Work was also conducted on experimental design methodologies for multiple sensor fusion and detection of affect in built environments. These contributions include exploring new methodologies in applying supervised machine learning algorithms, such as logistic regression, random forests, and artificial neural networks, in the detection of arousal in built environments. Results have shown a machine learning approach can not only be used to detect arousal in built environments but also for the construction of novel explanatory models of the data.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-07T15:08:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Arquivototal.pdf: 392914 bytes, checksum: 38a5307c098e1fe9a672759d2abc509f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-08-24 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This research bibliographic aims to determine whether the proposal prepared by the Principle Biocentric, Chilean Rolando Toro breaks new conceptual methodological, to the field of Education. The relationship between the biocentric paradigms Principle as an object of research does highlight some contributions to education among which we highlight: affection as a factor that promotes learning, emotional intelligence as a vital aspect to contemporary education, body language as knowledge based a sensitive logic, the historicity of the body and ethical conduct. We take the theoretical creator of this theme Rolando Toro, Elisa Gonsalves, Fritjof Capra, David Bohm, and Nobert Elias, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela and others. The theoretical construction on the sensitive, intuitive and what is felt, lived and experienced in the here and now, through stimulation pro-life, provides elements for building a basic epistemological arguments that articulates the understanding of the human body in its relationship with the environment , culture and society in which they live, as well as the phenomenon of cognition as a text body, advocating a design for human development in multiple dimensions: cognitive, social, cultural, experiential, emotional, spiritual, ethical and affective. / Esta pesquisa, de natureza bibliográfica, tem como objetivo verificar se a proposta do Princípio Biocêntrico elaborado pelo chileno Rolando Toro traz inovações conceituais, metodológicas para o campo da Educação. A relação do paradigma do Princípio Biocêntrico como objeto da pesquisa faz ressaltar algumas contribuições para a educação dentre as quais destacamos: a afetividade como fator promotor da aprendizagem; a inteligência afetiva como aspecto imprescindível para a educação contemporânea; a linguagem do corpo como um conhecimento pautado numa lógica sensível; a historicidade do corpo e as condutas éticas. Tomamos como referencial teórico o criador dessa temática Rolando Toro, Elisa Gonsalves, Fritjof Capra, David Bohm, Nobert Elias, Humberto Maturana e Francisco Varela dentre outros. A construção teórica sobre o sensível, intuitivo e o que é sentido, vivenciado e experienciado no aqui e agora, mediante estímulos pró-vida, fornece elementos para a construção de uma base epistemológica que articule argumentos da compreensão do corpo humano na sua relação com o ambiente, a cultura e sociedade em que vive, bem como o fenômeno da cognição como um texto corporal, defendendo uma concepção para o desenvolvimento humano nas múltiplas dimensões: cognitiva; social; cultural; vivencial; emocional; espiritual; ético e afetivo.

Previous research of the theory of Affective Intelligence holds that anxiety in individuals causes learning behavior. If people are anxious they will actively seek new information. This new information gathered while anxious will cause each individual person to cease acting habitually and begin acting in a manner in line with rational choice models. This thesis addresses three hypotheses; (1) that people who feel anxiety engage in greater information seeking behavior and (2) when people feel anxious they will use information sources that are readily available and efficient to use and (3) anxious individuals will turnout to vote more often than those who are not anxious. I began with the replication of the original research methods of Marcus and MacKuen (1993) and Marcus, Neuman and MacKuen (2000). I then tested hypothesis 1 using new measurements of anxiety in order to address the concerns originally posited by Ladd and Lenz (2008) and Valentino et al. (2008). My final test of hypothesis 1 used revised measurements of anxiety and information derived from 2000-2002 NES Panel data, much in the same manner as Marcus, Neuman and MacKuen (2000). I then tested hypothesis 2 using the same 2000-2002 NES Panel data and an information source change variable. I tested my final hypothesis using pooled NES data from 1984, 1988 and 2000. My findings suggest that as Affective Intelligence predicts, people who feel anxious do tend to seek information. Moreover, when anxious, people will use readily available and efficient information sources. My final finding suggests that although people tend to seek information when anxious this does not necessarily translate into greater participation. Finally, I conclude that the theory of Affective Intelligence is generally correct, but, further research using methods that can better demonstrate the causal direction needs to be undertaken to fully validate Affective Intelligence and more testing of the effect of anxiety on political participation is necessary.

This dissertation seeks to improve our understanding of the process by which emotions enable citizens to learn about public affairs and engage in political activities during electoral campaigns. It advances a theoretical model that incorporates the dynamics of emotions, various forms of media use, interpersonal communication and political involvement. This affective citizen communication model integrates into a single framework the insights of affective intelligence theory (Marcus, Neuman, & MacKuen, 2000) and the work on communication mediation (McLeod et al., 1999, 2001) and its two iterations, cognitive mediation (Eveland, 2001) and citizen communication mediation (Cho et al., 2009; Shah et al., 2005, 2007). More specifically, it suggests that the effects of emotions triggered by political candidates (e.g., enthusiasm, anxiety, anger) on knowledge of the candidates’ stands on issues and on political participation are largely mediated by communication variables, including news media use, political discussion and debate viewing. By positing emotions as an antecedent of both mediated and interpersonal communication, the study extends current research based on affective intelligence theory. At the same time, the study adds emotions to communication mediation processes, which to date have been studied from a mostly cognitive perspective. To test the relationships between the variables identified in the affective citizen communication model, I rely on panel survey data collected for the 2008 and 2004 U.S. presidential elections by the American National Election Studies (ANES) and the National Annenberg Election Surveys (NAES), respectively. Two types of structural equation models are tested, cross sectional (to relate individual differences) and auto-regressive (to relate aggregate change across waves). Results suggest that positive emotions spark media use, whereas negative emotions spark political discussions, and both types of communication behavior influence issue knowledge and participation in campaign activities. Furthermore, the theorized structure is found to perform better than an alternative structure where communication variables cause positive and negative emotions. Thus, results provide strong support for the proposed affective citizen communication model. Refinements to the proposed model, connections with existing theories of political communication, such as agenda setting and partisan selective exposure, and directions for future research are also discussed. / text

Ce mémoire porte sur les liens entre les médias, les émotions et la séquence d’événements lors d’une mobilisation sociale. Nous avons fait une étude de cas sur la révolution égyptienne de 2011. L’objectif est de comprendre comment les gens se mobilisent lors d’un événement de cet ordre. Au niveau théorique, nous explorons les travaux de Castells (2012) sur les mouvements de foule. Nous présentons la théorie d’intelligence affective pour résumer ce que les chercheurs ont dit sur la place des émotions en temps de mobilisation. En ce qui concerne la méthodologie, nous avons effectué des entrevues semi-structurées avec des Égyptiens qui ont participé à la révolution de 2011 ou l’ont suivie. Nous utilisons des cartes cognitives pour comprendre leur expérience. Une carte cognitive est une analyse qui vise à révéler les représentations, soit les liens que voient les personnes entre différentes composantes. Les résultats de cette recherche semblent illustrés le fait qu’au début de la révolution, les gens ont surtout utilisé Facebook pour en apprendre sur les manifestations. Plus tard, autres formes de communication ont pris de l’importance pour s’informer sur ce qui se passait dans le pays et pour mobiliser les gens. Par ailleurs, de la colère s’est fait sentir à la fois pendant et avant la révolution. La discussion a permis d’analyser la mobilisation sociale avec l’arrivée du web 2.0 et de s’interroger sur ce phénomène ainsi que sur l’importance de la communication interpersonnelle et des émotions durant une révolution. / In this master thesis, we question the links between the emotions, Medias and the sequence of events during social mobilization. This research is a case study on the Egyptian revolution of 2011. In the chapter on literature review, we summarize the studies on social movements of Castells (2012). We then present the theory of affective intelligence in order to understand what has been said on the presence of emotions during time of mobilization. For the methodology, we have done semi-structured interviews with Egyptians who have either participated or followed the revolution in 2011. Cognitive maps were used to understand what the research’s participants have experienced. The results show that at the beginning of the revolution, Facebook was used by the participants to learn about protests. Later on, other forms of communication became really important to learn about what was happening in the country and to mobilize others. Moreover, anger was highly felt during and before the revolution. The discussion led to the analysis and interrogation of social mobilization with the arrival of Web 2.0, the importance of interpersonal communication as well as the significance of emotions during a revolution.