Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

330 Understanding Emotional Decision Making

FIGURE 7.5 A Visual Appeal to Fear: President Johnson’s “Daisy” ad juxtaposed images of a little girl and
a nuclear explosion

Source: courtesy of Democratic National Committee

CEOs use emotionally charged words to appeal to the emotions of their audiences as well.

When new CEOs use emotionally charged words in their initial letters to their shareholders,

fi nancial analysts who read the letters tend to make more favorable earnings forecasts. The typical

new CEO letter to shareholders uses negatively charged words to describe the past and positively

charged ones such as “faith,” “challenge,” and “inspiration” to describe the CEO’s vision of the

future and how it will be achieved. The more emotional language the new CEOs uses, the more

inclined analysts are to issue favorable recommendations.^213

Emotionally charged images also have a signifi cant impact on the emotions and the decisions of

audiences who see them. A study of the effects of live testimony and video re-creations of a crime

on mock jurors’ decisions fi nds that jurors who either viewed live testimony or who viewed live

testimony and then watched video re-creations had stronger emotional reactions to the evidence

than jurors who simply read a transcript of the trial.^214 Moreover, mock jurors who view gruesome

videos have lower thresholds to convict than those who do not view the videos but instead hear a

verbal description of the evidence.^215 Another study presented two groups of mock jurors with the

same transcript of a murder trial but showed autopsy photographs to only one of the two groups.^216

Although the transcript described the victim’s wounds verbally, the group exposed to the autopsy

photographs was twice as likely to fi nd the defendant guilty.

In addition, the sentences mock jurors hand down are more extreme when the jurors are

presented with vivid photographic evidence. Mock jurors who view extremely gruesome pho-

tographic evidence are more likely to decide on the death sentence.^217 Mock jurors who view

photographs of a victim’s injury award a greater proportion of the requested damages.^218 Moreover,

when the victim’s injuries are severe and the defendant is clearly to blame, mock jurors who view

color photographs of the injured party give higher monetary awards than those who view either

black-and-white photographs or no photographs at all.^219

Audiences also respond strongly to a combination of emotionally charged words and images.

A study of investor decision making found that emotionally charged verbal and pictorial elements

in an ad for a mutual fund decreased the amount of risk both expert and novice investors perceived.

However, the emotional elements of the ad had a greater effect on the novices than on the experts.^220

One of the most famous examples of the use of emotionally charged words and images in a

political campaign is the “Daisy” ad (see Figure 7.5), created by advertising guru Tony Schwartz