All the anger in politics may have a short-term benefit for politicians and voters alike, according to a study published this month in the Political Research Quarterly.

The study, by Carey Stapleton at CU Boulder and Ryan Dawkins at the U.S. Air Force Academy, surveyed 1,400 individuals online, and found that angry politicians make for angry voters, but that may motivate voters to the ballot box. 

“Politicians want to get reelected, and anger is a powerful tool that they can use to make that happen,” Stapleton said in a news release Monday. 

“Anger is a very strong, short-term emotion that motivates people into action,” he added. “But there can be these much more negative implications in the long term. There’s always the potential that anger can turn into rage and violence.”

The study took the form of an experiment, using stories about made-up politicians running for an open Congressional seat in Minnesota, and fake news stories on immigration policy.  “Unbeknownst to the study’s subjects, neither the candidates nor their debate were real.”

“In some cases, the faux politicians used language that tipped into outrage (although it might still look tame in the current political landscape). ‘When I look at our borders, I’m enraged by what I see,’ an example. In other cases, the soap boxers stuck to more neutral language.”

“We report being angrier after seeing our fellow partisans being angry,” Stapleton said. “When the other side is angry, it doesn’t seem to affect us much at all.”

But the author of a 2020 book, “American Rage: How Anger Shapes Our Politics,” says that such anger, while good for political campaigns, is bad for democracy. 

“Politicians themselves are deliberately seeking to make Americans angry and they do this because when people are angry, they tend to vote loyally for their own party’s slate of candidates up and down the ballot,” according to Steven Webster, assistant professor of political science at Indiana University and as quoted by Voice of America.

“So, put simply, an angry voter is a loyal voter and because politicians are concerned with getting reelected, they make us angry to further that goal,” Webster said. Such anger also leads to less trust in government.

Stapleton says that when watching news, people should pay attention to how politicians may appeal to or even manipulate emotions to get what they want. “But anger is only part of the picture. In a previous study, he and his colleagues discovered that optimistic people are much more likely to be politically active than pessimists.

“Anger is one way we can get people to vote and get engaged in politics, but it’s not the only way,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom.”