Page 50 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Social Psychological Foundations of Social Marketing 43

negative ones. When thinking levels are high, though, emotions serve in
other roles. First, emotions can be evaluated as evidence (e.g., negative
emotions such as sadness or fear can lead to positive evaluations of a movie
if these are the intended states; see Martin, 2000). Also, when thinking
levels are high, emotions can bias the ongoing thoughts (e.g., positive con-
sequences seem more likely when people are in a happy state as opposed to
a sad state; DeSteno, Petty, Wegener & Rucker, 2000). In addition, this bias
has an emotion-specific component. In one study (DeSteno, Petty, Rucker,
Wegener & Braverman, 2004), participants made to feel sad were more
persuaded by a message pointing to sad consequences of a proposal rather
than by a message pointing to angry consequences, whereas those partici-
pants made to feel angry were more persuaded by a message pointing to
angering consequences than by a message pointing to sad ones. If an emo-
tion is induced after people have finished thinking about the message rather
than prior to doing so, then emotions can affect confidence in their thoughts
(Briñol, Petty & Barden, 2007). This effect depends on the link between
specific emotions and certainty appraisals. Because emotions such as hap-
piness and anger are associated with certainty, these can validate thoughts
whereas emotions such as sadness can cause doubt in thoughts and lead to
less use of them (Tiedens & Linton, 2001). Finally, when the likelihood of
thinking is not constrained to be high or low by other variables, then emo-
tions can affect the extent of thinking. People might think about messages
more when in a sad state than when in a happy state, either because sadness
signals a problem to be solved (Schwarz, Bless & Bohner, 1991), conveys a
sense of uncertainty (Tiedens & Linton, 2001), or invokes a motive to
maintain one’s happiness (Wegener & Petty, 1994).
This discussion illustrates the importance for social marketers to under-
stand not only the variables at play in a persuasive message but the recipi-
ent’s elaboration level. Without considering the elaboration level, a
marketer may incorrectly believe a variable will have a positive effect
when, in fact, it may have a negative effect.

The Interplay between Recipient, Source, and Message Factors
Although a given variable can affect persuasion through a variety of proc-
esses, the persuasion situation is a dynamic one. Persuasive communica-
tions often host interactions between recipient, source, and message
factors. To highlight this interplay, we focus on interactions that have been
observed between message and recipient factors. In particular, much past
research on persuasion has examined the effectiveness of matching, tailor-
ing, or aligning messages to their audience in order to enhance persuasion