There is increasing evidence that citizens consume the news because it arouses them. However, to explain the motivated processing of news messages, research usually focuses on negative discrete emotions or the valence dimension of affect. This means that the role of arousal is largely overlooked. In this experiment, conducted in 2019 in Austria, I exposed 191 citizens to a televised news item about immigration—varying the level of threat, while taking physiological measures of negative valence and arousal, followed by self-reported indicators of motivated reasoning. The results indicate that combining the valence and arousal dimensions of affect is the preferred way to understand citizens' reactions to political news. While negative affect predicted motivated reasoning, these effects were much more pronounced for those who experienced high arousal at the same time. Not only does this illuminate some of the black box behind motivated reasoning, the consequences for journalism are profound: the way that journalists cover the news might unwittingly drive citizens apart.

越来越多的证据表明，公民消费新闻是因为它引起了人们的注意。但是，为了解释新闻消息的动机处理，研究通常集中于负面的离散情绪或情感的效价维度。这意味着唤醒的作用在很大程度上被忽略了。在2019年于奥地利进行的这项实验中，我让191名公民接触了有关移民的电视新闻，改变了威胁的程度，同时采取了消极的价调和唤醒的生理措施，然后自我报告了动机推理的指标。结果表明，结合情感的效价和唤醒维度是理解公民对政治新闻反应的首选方式。负面影响会影响预期的动机推理，对于那些同时经历了高唤醒的人来说，这些影响更为明显。这不仅说明了动机推理背后的一些黑匣子，而且对新闻业的影响是深远的：记者报道新闻的方式可能会不知不觉地将公民驱散。