Empathy Versus Pride: the Influence of Emotional Appeals Across Cultures

This research examines the persuasive effect of emotional appeals on members of collectivist versus individualist cultures. The results of two experiments demon-strate that ego-focused (e.g., pride, happiness) versus other-focused (e.g., empa-thy, peacefulness) emotional appeals lead to more favorable attitudes for mem-bers of a collectivist culture, while other-focused versus ego-focused emotional appeals lead to more favorable attitudes for members of an individualist culture. Experiment 2 was conducted to examine the psychological mechanism underly-ing these effects. The results indicated that the generation of and elaboration on a relatively novel type of thought ( individual thoughts for members of a collectivist culture, collective thoughts for members of an individualist culture) account for the persuasive effects found in this research. These results are interpreted within an ability-motivation framework, and theoretical implications involving cross-cul-tural persuasion effects are discussed. A cultural orientation and emotion to examine how emo-tional appeals operate differently across cultures.considerable amount of research in consumer behav-ior has examined how emotions are used in persua-sion appeals. Researchers have focused on how emotions In addition, we explore the psychological mechanism