When Timing Matters: The Influence of Temporal Distance on Consumers' Affective and Persuasive Responses

Existing theorizing suggests that consumers should experience more intense affective reactions when a positive outcome is missed (short temporal distance) than when its occurrence is relatively remote (long temporal distance). Two studies are reported that explore why and when these effects occur and whether they also occur for persuasion responses. The findings indicate that this effect is likely to occur and influence persuasion only when people's involvement with the message issue is low rather than high. This observation together with findings obtained on a thought-listing task provide evidence that variations in temporal distance seem to operate by altering people's motivation to scrutinize a situation and evoke thoughts about alternative outcomes that might have been. Copyright 1992 by the University of Chicago.