Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

Emotions in Audience Decision Making 331

and aired on U.S. TV on September 7, 1964. Its purpose was to promote President Lyndon John-

son’s campaign for reelection. The “Daisy” ad begins by showing a little girl slowly counting each

petal she picks off a daisy. When the little girl reaches the count of “nine,” a threatening male voice

begins the countdown of a missile launch, at which point the little girl looks up toward the sky. As

the girl looks to the sky, the camera zooms in on her eyes. Next, a nuclear bomb is shown exploding

while President Johnson can be heard to say, “These are the stakes! To make a world in which all

of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.”

Another speaker then says, “Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high

for you to stay home.” Because so many complained that President Johnson’s campaign used the ad

to frighten voters into believing his opponent, Republican Barry Goldwater, would start a nuclear

war, his campaign never aired the “Daisy” ad again.

Narratives and Metaphors as Emotional Intensifi ers

The written word can evoke a number of different emotions in audiences.^221 Writing in nar-

rative or story form is especially likely to evoke the audience’s emotions. A study of readers

reading 4,000-word stories fi nds they are aware of having about fi ve emotions per story.^222 Nar-

rative poems, such as Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” are effective at arousing

readers’ emotions as well.^223

Although readers tend to respond emotionally to narrative forms of writing, they typically

respond with little emotion to the style of writing newspaper reporters commonly use.^224 Readers

also respond with less emotion to logical arguments than to arguments presented as narratives.^225

Consequently, the persuasive impact of emotional appeals is stronger when they are communicated

in the form of narratives and stories or when narratives and stories are included in the appeals along

with facts.^226 In one study of fear appeals, including personal stories about victims’ injuries resulted

in a 19% improvement in compliance with safety regulations.^227

In addition to responding emotionally to narratives, audiences also respond emotionally to meta-

phors. Metaphors can persuade audience members to change their attitudes toward various social

and political issues.^228 Furthermore, it is the ability of metaphors to evoke specifi c emotions that

accounts for a signifi cant part of their persuasiveness.^229 Metaphors are particularly infl uential

when introduced early in a persuasive communication.^230

Politicians routinely use metaphors to evoke emotions and to persuade. U.S. presidents whom

voters rate as charismatic used nearly twice as many metaphors in their inaugural addresses (adjusted

for speech length) as presidents voters rate as noncharismatic. Moreover, the passages in inaugural

addresses that voters rate as most inspirational are those that contain metaphors.^231

During the three-day debate in the U.S. Senate in 1991 over the Persian Gulf War, both Repub-

licans and Democrats often used metaphors to bolster their positions. For example, one Republican

senator used the following metaphorical description of Saddam Hussein as a glutton to evoke the

negative emotional response of disgust:

Saddam Hussein is like a glutton—a geopolitical glutton. He is sitting down at a big ban-

quet table, overfl owing with goodies. And let me tell you—like every glutton, he is going

to have them all. Kuwait is just the appetizer—He is gobbling it up—but it is not going

to satisfy him. After a noisy belch or two, he is going to reach across the table for the next

morsel. What is it going to be? Saudi Arabia?... He is going to keep grabbing and gob-

bling,... It is time to let this grisly glutton know the free lunch is over. It is time for him

to pay the bill.^232