Emotions in Audience Decision Making 325When news stories are framed to evoke different emotions, the decisions audience membersmake after reading them are congruent with the action tendencies of the emotions evoked.^166 For
example, a news story about a social issue framed to evoke anger led readers to prefer policies that
punished the wrong doers. Conversely, a news story about the same issue framed to evoke sadness
led other readers to prefer policies that helped the victims.^167
In another framing study, pictures and audio clips from news stories about the 9/11 terroristattacks were combined to evoke either anger or fear in a nationwide sample of 973 Americans.^168
The anger-evoking pictures and clips, showing groups in other countries celebrating the attacks,
increased audience support for punitive policy measures to deal with terrorism, including the
deportation of foreigners who lack valid visas. On the other hand, the fear-evoking pictures and
clips, warning of anthrax and bioterrorism, increased audience support for precautionary policy
measures such as strengthening ties with America’s Middle-Eastern allies.
When audience members change their emotional appraisals of events, they change theiraction tendencies and the decisions they make about those events as well. If an audience mem-
ber simply tries to suppress her anger and disgust about an unfair offer, she will be unable
to change the action tendency to reject the offer. However, if she reinterprets her emotional
response to an unfair offer (e.g., by concluding that the real cause of her upset was her bad day
at the offi ce), she will change the action tendency to reject the offer and change the decision
she makes as well.^169
Brain Regions Activated. Neuroscientists fi nd that such emotional reappraisals increase activa-tion of the frontal lobe which reduces amygdala activation in a top-down manner (see Figures 3.4
and 3.5 , p. 108).^170
The Inhibition of Information Acquisition and Integration
Because emotional appraisals automatically trigger an action tendency in response to a situa-
tion (e.g., attack, escape, dominate), they can simultaneously inhibit the process of information
acquisition or search and lead audiences to inadequately scrutinize information.^171 Conse-
quently, emotional decisions often entail no deliberation at all—the “right” choice appears to be
“self-evident.”^172
Emotional appraisals also inhibit the audience’s information integration process. Whereastrade-offs among decision criteria are common in rational decision making (e.g., to get bet-
ter quality you may have to pay more), emotional appraisals inhibit trade-offs.^173 As we have
seen, product attributes with implications for consumers’ highly valued goals trigger more emo-
tion and are higher in trade-off diffi culty than product attributes with few emotionally relevant
implications.
Emotional appraisals inhibit trade-offs in voter decision making as well. In a study of fram-ing effects, one group of voters read news stories about the positions of political candidates
on health care issues whose arguments were framed in emotional, value-laden terms. Another
group of voters read similar news stories about the positions of candidates whose arguments
were framed in neutral, economic terms. Then both groups were asked to vote for a candidate.
Voters who read the health care arguments framed in emotional, value-laden terms were more
likely to use a noncompensatory decision strategy and thus avoid making trade-offs than voters
who read the health care arguments framed in neutral, economic terms. Forty-one percent of
the voters who read the emotionally framed arguments used a noncompensatory strategy when
making their decisions compared to only 16% of the voters who read the economically framed
arguments.^174