TY - JOUR
T1 - Incidental moods, source likeability, and persuasion
T2 - Liking motivates message elaboration in happy people
AU - Sinclair, Robert C.
AU - Moore, Sean E.
AU - Mark, Melvin M.
AU - Soldat, Alexander S.
AU - Lavis, Carrie A.
N1 - Funding Information:
Correspondence should be addressed to: Robert C. Sinclair, Department of Psychology, Laurentian University, Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, ON P3E 2C6, Canada. E-mail: [email protected] Alex Soldat is now at Alhosn University, Abu Dhabi, UAE. The research was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant to RCS. Norman Brown, Curt Hoffman, Arie Kruglanski, Diane Mackie, Lenny Martin, Rich Petty, and several anonymous reviewers are thanked for their comments on previous versions of this manuscript. We also thank all of the students enrolled in the Individual Studies Research course for their assistance in data collection and coding. Study 2 was conducted as a first year research project for partial fulfilment of the second author’s PhD under the direction of the first author.
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - Happy people often fail to elaborate on persuasive arguments, while people in sad moods tend to scrutinise messages in greater detail. According to some motivational accounts, however, happy people will elaborate a message if they believe it might maintain their positive mood. The present research extends this reasoning by demonstrating that happy people will elaborate arguments from message presenters that convey positive hedonic attributes (i.e., source likeability). In a pilot study, we show that happy people believe persuasive messages from a likeable source will be mood maintaining. The results of Study 1 demonstrate that these expectancies have important message-processing implications. In Study 1, sad participants elaborated arguments from both likeable and dislikeable sources, while happy participants only elaborated arguments from a likeable source. Consistent with motivational explanation of these effects, in Study 2, happy participants elaborated arguments from a likeable source when not distracted, but used likeability as a heuristic when distracted with a cognitive-load manipulation. Implications of these results for understanding the effects of mood on processing strategy, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.
AB - Happy people often fail to elaborate on persuasive arguments, while people in sad moods tend to scrutinise messages in greater detail. According to some motivational accounts, however, happy people will elaborate a message if they believe it might maintain their positive mood. The present research extends this reasoning by demonstrating that happy people will elaborate arguments from message presenters that convey positive hedonic attributes (i.e., source likeability). In a pilot study, we show that happy people believe persuasive messages from a likeable source will be mood maintaining. The results of Study 1 demonstrate that these expectancies have important message-processing implications. In Study 1, sad participants elaborated arguments from both likeable and dislikeable sources, while happy participants only elaborated arguments from a likeable source. Consistent with motivational explanation of these effects, in Study 2, happy participants elaborated arguments from a likeable source when not distracted, but used likeability as a heuristic when distracted with a cognitive-load manipulation. Implications of these results for understanding the effects of mood on processing strategy, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.
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U2 - 10.1080/02699930903000206
DO - 10.1080/02699930903000206
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:77956158951
SN - 0269-9931
VL - 24
SP - 940
EP - 961
JO - Cognition and Emotion
JF - Cognition and Emotion
IS - 6
ER -