Do individual emotions affect how members of parliament (MPs) process policy
information? In this paper, we investigate whether different policy domains moder-
ate the effect of anxiety on the MPs’ willingness to policy learning. It is often argued
that the increasing amount of policy failure can be explained in the lack of policy
learning by decision makers. While previous studies show that socio-economic and
partisan variables are related to the perception of policy information, little attention
has been paid to the role of emotions in the policy making process. We contribute
to this literature by applying the Marcus’ Affective Intelligence Model that stud-
ies how emotions affect individuals’ processing of information. To do so, we will
rely on experimental data conducted amongst MPs from the 26 Swiss cantons, in
which we randomize images that are shown together with policy information. This
analysis will allow us to investigate for causal relationships between emotions and
policy learning. Hence, our findings might offer important implications in order to
understand how information through various sources influence legislative attitudes
and behavior.