Emotions in congressional speeches relate to legislative success
Politics of Feelings: Emotional Expression and Legislative Effectiveness in the U.S. Congress
Computation and Language
Summary
This paper looks at how different emotions expressed in speeches in the U.S. Congress relate to how effective lawmakers are at passing bills. The authors analyzed over 1.7 million speeches from 1973 to 2024, identifying feelings like anger, hope, and pride using an AI tool. They found that showing enthusiasm and pride helps lawmakers be more effective, while anger tends to hurt their success. The study shows that the way politicians express feelings can impact their work in government.
What this means in practice
- •For political communication strategists: Tailor speeches by lawmakers to include emotions like pride and enthusiasm to potentially improve legislative outcomes.
- •For government relations teams: Analyze emotional tone in congressional speeches to anticipate lawmaker effectiveness and improve lobbying strategies.
Authors
Segun Aroyehun
Abstract
Emotions are a pervasive feature of political communication, yet existing research has focused primarily on describing patterns of emotional expression rather than examining whether they are associated with consequential legislative outcomes. We address this gap by investigating the expression and correlates of discrete emotions in more than 1.7 million speeches delivered in the U.S. Congress between 1973 and 2024. Using a transformer-based emotion classifier, we measure eight discrete emotions: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, joy, enthusiasm, pride, and hope. We examine how these emotions vary over time, across policy topics, legislator characteristics, and their relationship with legislative effectiveness. We find that congressional speeches are becoming emotionally expressive over time. Emotional expression also varies systematically across policy domains and ideological positioning of legislators. Notably, the relationship between emotional expression and legislative effectiveness depends on the specific emotions expressed: enthusiasm and pride are positively associated with effectiveness, whereas anger exhibits a negative association. Emotional valence and emotional diversity are positively associated with legislative effectiveness, while emotional intensity is negatively associated with legislative effectiveness. These findings demonstrate that computationally derived measures of discrete emotions can provide insight into affective dimensions of legislative speeches and facilitate our understanding of how legislators communicate, interact, and perform within democratic institutions.