Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

336 Understanding Emotional Decision Making

to overestimate the frequency of positive events and to underestimate the likelihood of negative

outcomes and events.^300 Thus, they tend to make optimistic judgments and risk-seeking decisions.

For example, audiences who read upbeat newspaper articles subsequently are willing to take more

risks than audiences who read sad articles.^301 However, happy audience members are less likely to

take risks when the stakes are high and the potential for loss is genuine.^302

Audiences put into happy moods also tend to make more positive evaluations of other people

and situations. For example, audiences put into happy moods make signifi cantly more positive than

negative evaluations of strangers, whereas those in bad moods are unlikely to allow their feelings to

infl uence their evaluations.^303 Consumers put into happy moods rate various products, brands, and

ads more positively.^304 In one study, consumers who viewed subliminally presented photos of happy

faces not only drank more, they also paid more for their drinks. Whereas, consumers who viewed

subliminally presented angry faces both drank less and paid less.^305 In a large random-sample inter-

view of the U.S. population, researchers found that interviewees who felt good at the time of their

interview gave more positive responses than interviewees in a bad mood.^306

Audiences put into happy moods generally agree more with persuasive messages than audiences

in other moods,^307 and are much more compliant than those put into angry moods.^308 When an

ad for a product puts consumers in a happy mood, they tend to adopt a positive attitude toward the

advertised brand.^309 When the music and images in a political campaign ad put voters in a happy

mood, voters feel greater certainty about their prior choice of candidates. As a consequence, happy

campaign ads both rally a candidate’s supporters and harden their opposition.^310

In most cases, audiences put into happy moods process persuasive messages without much ratio-

nal thought or deliberation.^311 A study of the effects of readers’ incidental moods fi nds that readers

in a neutral mood are more persuaded by strong arguments than weak ones, as they should be if

their decision-making process were rational. But readers put into happy moods are equally per-

suaded by both strong and weak arguments.^312 Inducing happy moods can even cause audiences

to perceive weak arguments to be more persuasive than strong ones. The use of humor in an ad

produces more positive attitudes among consumers when the ad uses weak arguments, and fewer

positive attitudes when the ad uses strong arguments.^313 Audiences in a happy mood are also more

likely to perceive novel arguments as familiar, which may contribute to their acceptance of them

as true.^314

In special cases, audiences put into happy moods will process persuasive messages in a rational

and deliberate way. For example, audiences put into happy moods are more infl uenced by strong

arguments than sad audiences when both groups believe the message causes happiness.^315 Com-

pared with unhappy audience members, audiences put into happy moods show less confusion,

less redundancy, and are better able to integrate task-relevant information when making deci-

sions.^316 If happy audiences are asked to make a decision that is interesting or important, they

will make the effort to process relevant information rationally and systematically.^317 And as long

as the decisions to be made are interesting or important, audiences put into happy moods also

make good decisions faster.^318 For example, happy consumers make purchasing decisions that

are just as rational as those made by consumers in neutral moods, but they make their decisions

more quickly.^319

The Effects of Incidental Sadness

Audiences put into sad or depressed moods, such as the recently unemployed or viewers watching

distressing events on the evening news, tend to make pessimistic judgments and decisions.^320 Thus,

they tend to overestimate the frequency of sad events and underestimate the likelihood of positive

events.^321 Audiences who are induced to feel sad are also more likely to expect future events to