Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12601

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Publication type: Journal Article

Briñol P, Petty RE, Barden J.
Happiness versus sadness as a determinant of thought confidence in persuasion: a self-validation analysis.
J Pers Soc Psychol 2007 Nov; 93:(5):711-27
http://content.apa.org/journals/psp/93/5/711

Abstract:

The present research introduces a new mechanism by which emotion can affect evaluation. On the basis of the self-validation hypothesis (R. E. Petty, P. Briñol, & Z. L. Tormala), the authors predicted and found that emotion can influence evaluative judgments by affecting the confidence people have in their thoughts to a persuasive message. In each study, participants first read a strong or weak persuasive communication. After listing their thoughts about the message, participants were induced to feel happy or sad. Relative to sad participants, those put in a happy state reported more thought confidence. As a consequence, the effect of argument quality on attitudes was greater for happy than for sad participants. These self-validation effects generalized across different emotion inductions, different persuasion topics, and different measures of thought confidence. In one study, happy and sad conditions each differed from a neutral affect control. Most important, these metacognitive effects of emotion only occurred under high elaboration conditions. In contrast, individuals with relatively low motivation to think showed a main effect of emotion on attitudes, regardless of argument quality. © 2007 APA, all rights reserved.

Keywords:
Attitude Cognition* Emotions* Happiness* Humans Judgment Ohio Persuasive Communication* Self Concept Spain User-Computer Interface