New findings from North Carolina State University shows that anticipating future stress related to future political election voting may impact emotional well-being. Education may serve protect against such stresses however.
The research from the International Journal of Psychology focused on whether such responses to elections may be associated political orientation, partnership or time.
125 adult Americans served as participants for the study, providing more than 1,000 daily reports in a 29-day daily diary study.
What researchers uncovered in their findings: “Results indicated that daily forecasts of election stressors contributed to increased NA independent of election stressor exposure.”
“Election stressor forecasting was more pronounced during pre-election days and the election day than post-election days, as well as greater in conservatives than liberals. Coping with anticipatory stress may be important for managing election stress,” the research also showed.
Another study in Current Psychology determined that educational differences may play a role in protecting against election stress.
“Our results show that individual differences (e.g., age, education) interact with situational changes (e.g., daily socio-political participation) to predict changes in daily election-related stressor exposure,” the second study concluded.
