Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

312 Understanding Emotional Decision Making

Political psychologist Drew Westen uses the exchange between the two candidates to illustrate the

difference between a highly logical and reasonable appeal to voters and an appeal based on emo-

tions.^2 Whereas Vice President Gore spoke in a cold and humorless manner, then-governor Bush

delivered his remarks in a friendly, affable style. Whereas Gore framed his Medicare plan in the

language of an economist, Bush framed his plan so as to achieve maximum emotional resonance

with the voting public, calling it the “Immediate Helping Hand.”

Instead of getting voters to feel the difference between his concern for the welfare of seniors

struggling to pay their medical bills and Bush’s, Gore went to a level of numerical precision—

premised on a model of expected utility, giving them every number they needed to make

the appropriate calculations—that played right into Bush’s strategy of portraying Gore as an

emotionless policy wonk, “not a regular guy, like us.”

(Westen 2007, p. 33)

The ability to make an emotional connection with an audience is an essential leadership skill.

The extent to which U.S. presidents’ speeches evoke emotions is directly related to the public’s

perception of each president’s charisma and greatness.^3 Indeed, the hallmark of truly great speeches

and the leaders who deliver them is their ability to stir the audience’s emotions. However, many

professionals overestimate their ability to elicit the emotions they intend. For example, audiences

often interpret professionals’ emails intended to be funny as being sarcastic and insulting instead.^4

Obviously, emotions play an important role in audience decision making, but what are emo-

tions? Emotions are comprised of:

(1) thoughts and feelings;

(2) physical responses in the brain and body;

(3) facial, vocal, and postural expressions; and

(4) action tendencies or readiness for certain behaviors.^5

Audience members acquire emotions early in life. By age six months, children have acquired the

emotions of surprise, interest, joy, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust. By age two, they have acquired

envy and empathy. By age three, embarrassment, pride, shame, and guilt.^6

Psychologically, emotions alter the audience’s attention, change the way they process infor-

mation, and activate associative memories.^7 Physiologically, emotions produce a bodily state in

audience members that is optimal for an effective response to the perceived situation. Emotions

alter the audience’s skeletomuscular system, their autonomic nervous system, and their endocrine

system—the hormonal system that affects audience members’ refl exes, as well as their cardio-

vascular, electrodermal, gastrointestinal, and thyroid activity.^8 Thus, when audiences encounter

emotion-evoking information, their bodies respond. For example, threateningly worded and emotion-

evoking emailed reprimands, like the one from the CEO quoted in Chapter 6 (p. 277), signifi cantly

increase the diastolic blood pressure of the employees reading them.^9 Emotions not only change

blood pressure levels in audience members, they can even change the number of immune and anti-

body cells in their blood.^10

Emotions, although similar to moods, do not last as long. Whereas audiences may experience

moods for days, their emotions last only minutes or hours.^11

The emotions audience members experience allow them to evaluate stimuli, to sort out which

stimuli are good and which are bad, and to decide which stimuli should be approached and which

should be avoided.^12 Emotions also function to prepare audience members to respond to stimuli