New Influences:
Emotions and Consumer Behavior
MAR 3503
April 5, 2012
What are emotions?
• “Episodic, relatively short-term, biologicallybased patterns of perception, experience,
physiology, action, and communication that
occur in response to specific physical and
social challenges and opportunities”
• I.e., feelings that prepare a person for action
Keltner & Gross, 1999
Emotions are…
• Brief
– On the order of a few seconds (facial expressions) to a
few minutes (emotional experiences)
• Specific
– They are directed at particular events, people,
products
• Goal-oriented
– They are motivation to achieve certain objectives
• Social
– We usually only express emotions when others are
around
Components of emotions
• Example: Happiness
– Cognitive response: to an
event is seen as highly
conducive to reaching an
important goal or satisfying
a need
– Vocal expression: Increases
in pitch level, range, and
variability as well as vocal
intensity
– Physiological response:
Heart beats faster, warmer
skin temperature
Some basic emotions
Some basic emotions
• Paul Ekman posited six universal emotions
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–
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Happiness
Sadness
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Surprise
• These emotional states are irreducible
– Many kinds of sadness, happiness, etc, but nothing
above or broader than them
Some basic emotions
Some basic emotions
What are the basic components?
What do emotions do?
What do emotions do?
• Feelings-as-information
– People rely on their emotional reactions to
objects/events/people/etc when they make
judgments
– Feelings exist to tell you what to do (goaloriented)
– They work so well, we follow them even when
they’re irrelevant
A study
• Imagine a researcher calls you up on a spring
day:
– He wants to know how satisfied you are with your
life
– It’s either the first sunny, beautiful day that spring,
or it’s a cold, rainy day
– He either first asks you about the weather, or he
just launches into the questions
• How happy are you with your life?
A study
Schwarz & Clore, 1983
Embodied emotion
Embodied emotion
Embodied emotion
Happiness
• Signals that a situation is good or benign
– Goal is to keep it up!
Happiness is good, right?
• Happiness signals that things are okay
– Without a need to try to fix things, you’re free to
look at the big picture
– Happiness makes people more creative
– Happy people take higher level construals of
events, products
Isen et al., 1987; Labroo & Patrick, 2009
But…
• Happiness can lead us to think very
superficially, too
– We saw in talking about the ELM that happy
people are more likely to rely on peripheral cues
– They are also more likely to rely on heuristics
instead of careful thought
– Happy people are more likely to use stereotypes
to judge people
Sadness
• Stems from loss and helplessness
– Makes you want to change your circumstances to
feel better
Sadness is reverse happiness
• Sadness has the opposite effects of happiness:
– People focus on details and uniquenesses of
products, people
– They are less susceptible to weak persuasive
arguments
– They construe things at a lower, more concrete
level
– They are less creative
Sadness and economics
• Ps could choose
between money or a
prize
– Half were given the prize
and could sell it back;
the other half were
asked whether they
would prefer the item or
some amount of cash
Lerner, Small, & Loewenstein, 2004
Retail therapy
• People sometimes shop to relieve sadness
– It’s distracting, new things are pleasurable, etc
• We just saw that sadness increases people’s
WTP—they set a higher buying price for products
– This is consistent with compulsive shoppers
• They are more likely to be depressed, feel extreme negative
moods before shopping than normal shoppers
• Their moods are more likely to change from negative to
positive as they shop
– They seem to use shopping to manage undesirable
feelings
Anger
• Defined by sense of certainty (who/what
caused injustice or harm) and control (that
you can resolve it)
Certainty and risk
• Angry people are more certain, and this makes
them:
– More risk seeking
– More optimistic
• They recognize that bad thing will happen, just that
they will prevail over them
– Think more superficially
– Seek people/companies to blame for wrongs
Angry customers
• You don’t want your customers to get angry
– Not only do they not return to your company, they
often try to get revenge
• Negative WOM especially
• Anger and blame cycle on each other, so one bad
experience can escalate in a customer’s mind
• Time is of the essence when customers are
wronged
– Apologies and compensation should happen as
quickly as possible, to reduce blame to the company
Disgust
• “A revulsion at the prospect of (oral)
incorporation of an offensive substance”
– Reaction to disgusting thing is to get rid of them,
push them away
• Usually related to animal products/byproducts
Disgust and economics
• Ps could choose
between money or a
prize
– Half were given the prize
and could sell it back;
the other half were
asked whether they
would prefer the item or
some amount of cash
Lerner, Small, & Loewenstein, 2004
Disgust and contamination
• People believe that certain properties can be
transferred between objects/people/etc
– People don’t want to wear a washed sweater
worn by someone they don’t like
– People are afraid to touch AIDS patients, even
though they know nonrisky contact is perfectly
safe
– People don’t want to drink OJ that a sterilized
cockroach was dipped in
Disgust and contamination
Fear
• Arises from uncertainty and a feeling of a lack
of personal control over a situation
– Prompts a goal to flee
Fear = bad?
• If fear is unpleasant, why do people enjoy
horror movies? Or roller coasters?
• People can experience two emotions at once
– Controlled fear can be exciting/pleasant
• Fear can be preparatory or instrumental
– People who have avoidance goals are more likely
to prefer fear evoking situations
Fear appeals
• Fear appeals are effective, but not as strongly as
they could be
– How can we make them work better?
• Threat and efficacy are two main components of
fear appeals
– What is the bad thing? How can we fix it?
• Three responses:
– Low threat: ignore it
– High threat, low efficacy: deal with the fear
– High threat, high efficacy: deal with the threat
Surprise
• A (sometimes pleasant, sometimes neutral)
feeling of uncertainty
Surprise and word of mouth
• Surprised customers are more likely to spread
word of mouth
– Surprises are attention-grabbing
– Surprise leads people to try to make sense of what
happened, which prompts people to talk with
others for help
– Surprise amplifies preceding/subsequent
emotions, so a positive experience will seem
better, and a negative one worse
Summary
• Emotions are useful guides to experience
• There are several basic emotions: happiness,
sadness, anger, disgust, fear, surprise
• The physical aspect to emotions is important
• The characteristics of each emotion lead to
predictable effects on thought and behavior
• Next time: Nonconscious processes and
neurogimaging