Report on Literature on Emotional Needs, Emotional (Policy) Entrepreneurs, and Emotional Framing

The literature review presented here examines research on the emotional needs of individuals, groups, and policymakers, emotional policy entrepreneurs, and emotional framing synthesising the findings of over 480 academic articles, books and reports, drawing mainly from political psychology, psychology, and policy studies, and including works from related disciplines. On emotional needs, the analysis shows that the concept of ‘emotional needs’ has informed research in psychology, business studies, marketing, and the health sciences, and less so in political psychology. These studies concur that the needs of safety and security, belonging, and recognition are fundamental human requirements for mental and emotional well-being, which play a key role for individual and societal stability. On emotional policy entrepreneurs, the review explores studies in the field of policy sciences which concur that emotional policy entrepreneurs employ emotional manipulation strategies, along with non-emotional strategies, to achieve their policy goals. On framing experiments on protective policies, the review explores experimental studies and examines what frames were used, with what outcomes, and what was the role of emotions. The analysis finds that most of the experiments with framing did not measure emotions. When emotions were measured, they were treated as moderators or as mediators in the communication process between policies and outcomes (e.g. attitudes toward these policies). This literature review will serve as an input for the internal workshop on the theoretical and conceptual foundations (T1.4). Bringing together the findings of these three parts, it highlights gaps in extant research, as well as the connections between how the emotional needs of individuals, groups and policy makers are understood and addressed, how emotional policy entrepreneurs operate in this context, and how emotional framing can be instrumental for the communication of emotional needs. These insights will inform the theoretical contribution of PROTEMO as well as provide the framework to develop hypotheses and design empirical methodologies for the studies in the project.

PROTEMO is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.