More than a Feeling: Emotional Contagion Effects in Persuasive Communication

The authors develop an affect-as-information model to explain how targeted emotions used in persuasion can influence unrelated products and brands that are presented nearby. In Study 1, the presence of an emotion-eliciting image affected consumer spending on unrelated products in a simulated retail environment. In Study 2, emotional processing ability and whether consumers monitored their feelings moderated emotional transfers between unrelated advertisements, providing support for an affect-as-information model. In Studies 3 and 4, the authors use the context of evaluative conditioning to generalize the incidence of emotional contagion in persuasive communication. They manipulate salience of affect and whether brand attitudes were measured or primed to provide additional evidence for and extend affect-as-information theory.