If you’re still evaluating the results of the Midterm elections, a new psychological study offers some perspective about what might have been driving voters — on the left and right — to turn out this week.
 

Researchers at Tel Aviv University and the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya Emotions have found that liberals tend to be more motivated by emotions than conservatives.
 

The findings, published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, are based on analysis of six studies that examined emotions, ideology, and how they act together to affect support for policies.
 

The first two studies focused on empathy among Israelis, while the third study examined the interactive influence of ideology and despair on voting tendencies. Participants self-identified as being at different points of the right-left ideological spectrum.
 

Specific scenarios were selected for the six studies relating to current events in Israel, related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and possible steps towards its resolution.
 

"We selected our different scenarios with the aim of tackling both positive and negative developments in intergroup conflicts, eliciting a range of different emotions towards the out-group and the situation, referring to different types of out-groups, and among different in-groups,” said lead researcher Ruthie Pliskin. “Furthermore we wanted to utilize both contrived, controlled scenarios, and major real-world developments, reflecting real and possible political developments."
 

The researchers concluded that induced emotions have a greater influence on leftists' positions than on rightists' positions, which tend to be more ideologically based.
 

Parts of the study designed to induce empathy toward both Palestinians and asylum-seekers led to particularly strong support for conciliatory and humanitarian policies among leftists, the research found.
 

"We would expect to find similar results among rightists and leftists in other cultures, including conservatives and liberals in the U.S., because of the cross-cultural similarities in the superstructure of ideology and the needs associated with rightist versus leftist ideology — and because of how these factors relate to emotional processes and their outcomes," said Pliskin.