Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

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334 Understanding Emotional Decision Making


attitudes and team dynamics.^266 Groups experiencing positive emotional contagion show improved


cooperation, decreased confl ict, and increased perceived performance.^267 Conversely, groups expe-


riencing negative group emotions are less likely to cooperate and more likely to miss work.^268


Biases in Emotional Decision Making


The Effects of Incidental Moods and Emotions on Audience Decisions


Moods and emotions triggered by events pertinent to a decision, or integral moods and emotions,


generally have a stronger infl uence on audience decisions than incidental moods and emotions, or


ones triggered by unrelated events.^269 For example, the integral fear an investor feels after a sud-


den drop in stock prices will generally have a stronger effect on her investment decisions than the


incidental fear she feels after being startled by a sudden loud noise. But because people cannot


distinguish clearly between the integral emotion actually elicited by an event and the incidental


ones they happen to be experiencing for other, unrelated reasons, incidental moods and emotions


can infl uence their decisions as well. For example, traders in the fi nancial markets trade differently


when the music they listen to changes their mood. When the music puts them into a good mood,


traders tend to be overconfi dent and make less profi table trades than normal. When the music puts


them into a bad mood, on the other hand, they tend to be more conservative and to make more


profi table decisions.^270


A wide range of events unrelated to the decision to be made have been shown to affect audience

emotions and infl uence their decisions, events such as the weather, receiving a small gift, and remi-


niscing about a happy or sad past experience.^271 Even the upbeat or depressed color of the paper on


which information is printed can trigger a shift in mood and infl uence the audience’s decision.^272


Once a mood or emotion is triggered, it and its action tendency will linger after the trigger-

ing event has passed if the audience does not take the emotion-relieving action.^273 In such cases


the action tendencies triggered by one situation bias the audience’s assessment of unrelated situa-


tions.^274 In a study of the effects of incidental emotions on audience decision making, one group


of viewers watched a fi lm in which a violent criminal was punished and a second group watched


another fi lm in which the criminal evaded punishment due to a legal technicality. Both groups


reported equivalent levels of anger in response to the crime. Soon afterward, the two groups were


asked to read a legal case about a different crime and to recommend an appropriate punishment for


the perpetrator. Because the incidental anger felt by the second group went unrelieved, the second


group handed down harsher sentences.^275


Other studies confi rm that incidental moods and emotions can bias the audience’s action ten-

dencies. Readers whose anger was fi rst aroused by a story about toxic waste dumping were later


more likely to decide to punish the perpetrator of an unrelated incident than to help the victims of


that incident.^276 In a study that fi rst primed either anger or fear in two groups of participants, each


group was subsequently asked how they might reduce the problem of drunk driving. Sixty-fi ve


percent of the fear-primed group proposed safety or protection-oriented solutions, whereas 64% of


the anger-primed group proposed punishment or blame-oriented solutions.^277


Incidental moods and emotions can also bias cognitive processes such as perception,^278 atten-

tion,^279 and recall^280 in a way that leads the audience to make decisions congruent with their


emotional state.^281 A study that compared viewers who were and were not clinically depressed


tracked viewers’ eye movements while they looked at a series of pictures depicting both happy


and sad events. Viewers who were not clinically depressed fi xated on happy regions of the pictures


signifi cantly sooner, more often, and longer than they fi xated on sad regions. Viewers who were


depressed fi xated more on the sad regions.^282

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