Fear Or Romance Could Make You Change Your Mind, Study Finds

Fear Or Romance Could Make You Change Your Mind, Study Finds

Fear Or Romance Could Make You Change Your Mind, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2009)

EXCERPTS:

In the forthcoming paper "Fear and Loving in Las Vegas: Evolution, Emotion, and Persuasion," Griskevicius and his co-authors find that the emotion we are currently feeling has a strong effect on whether we decide to conform or to go against the grain "Being afraid especially leads people to go along with the crowd, activating a 'safety-in-numbers' psychology," said Griskevicius. "A feeling of lust, however, motivates people to go it alone, activating a desire to be seen as unique. Feeling scared or amorous can greatly change the way people make decisions."

The fact that emotions can dramatically influence people's tendency to go with or go against the group should not be overlooked by marketers. For example, advertisements often use persuasive appeals depicting products or ideas as being particularly popular or top sellers. The well-established tendency to conform makes such appeals generally quite effective. But when people view such ads on television, advertisers rarely consider that these viewers have often just been taken on an emotional roller coaster by the program they are currently watching. Indeed, Griskevicius and colleagues find that different types of commonly used persuasion appeals are differentially effective depending on the emotion that a viewer is feeling.

The paper was co-authored by Noah Goldstein (UCLA), Jill Sundie (University of Houston), and Chad Mortensen, Robert Cialdini and Douglas Kenrick (University of Arizona).


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This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.