Gaming Emotions in Social Interactions

One’s own emotions may influence someone else’s behavior in a social interaction. If one believes this, she or he has an incentive to game emotions—to strategically modify the expression of a current emotional state—in an attempt to influence her or his counterpart. In a series of three experiments, this article investigates the extent to which people (1) misrepresent a current emotional state, (2) willfully acknowledge their strategic actions, (3) choose to game emotions over nonemo-tional information, and (4) improve their financial well-being from emotion gaming. There is limited literature on social interaction in con-sumer research, let alone on the moderating role of emotion expression (see Buchan, Croson, and Johnson [2004] for a discussion). This is surprising because social interaction often takes place before, during, and/or after the purchase of a product or service in many consumer contexts. Moreover, it seems plausible that emotional display might play a role when people interact with each other. For ex-ample, a waiter smiles when handing over a check to a customer in hope for a good tip. Similarly, a car buyer may inflate her anger when negotiating with a car dealer in order to obtain a lower price. Finally, a professional poker player hides his emotions—positive or negative—during a game so as not to reveal his hands. These examples suggest (a) that emotion expression and social interaction may be in-herently linked and (b) that the former may be strategically used to influence the outcome of the later. In this article, we posit that consumers are willing to game emotions—to strategically modify the expression of a current emotional state—in an attempt to influence a third party. In a series of three experiments, we investigate the extent to