ABSTRACT
People typically seek out information that aligns with their political ideology and avoid information that does not. Here we examine a boundary condition to this effect, in which the typical pattern of engagement reverses. Through a series of field studies, in which we exposed over half a million Americans to paid political posts on Facebook, we found that people were more likely to engage with posts advocating for an ideology-inconsistent political cause (e.g. conservatives exposed to posts supporting gun control) than an ideology-consistent one (e.g. conservatives exposed to posts opposing gun control). Our results suggest that such engagement is driven by the outrage generated by ideology-inconsistent content and that people fail to predict its effect, highlighting the important and unexpected role of negative emotions in online political engagement.