Politics of Feelings: Emotional Expression and Legislative Effectiveness in the U.S. Congress

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.