It is therefore necessary to first consider how we process emotional (positive and negative) words. There is a continuous interaction between the two levels in determining the overall communicative capacity of a message. ![]() It can also be conceptualized at the level of individual words which, through their own semantic properties, can themselves establish scenarios and causal relationships, and can create an emotional environment. A message can be conceptualized at the discourse-level, where a general narrative and scenario context are established. This lack of interest in the psycholinguistic properties of the message is curious given the weight of research which has investigated the interaction of the semantic properties of words with discourse-level effects (e.g., Morris, 1994 Garrod and Terras, 2000 Hagoort et al., 2004 Sereno et al., 2006). Even studies which use processing measures such as speed of comprehension are relatively rare. The overwhelming focus of persuasion research has been on message-level features, with less interest in lower-level aspects of a message, such as the use of emotional language. While it is well-established that advertisers woo in part through emotionally manipulating their audience, no study to our knowledge has investigated the relative contribution of component emotion words to convey persuasive messages and to determine their role in attitude formation. The focus in such inquiries has always been on the valence of information presented (e.g., an overall positive appraisal with some minor negative information included) rather than the composition of the message. ![]() Topics extensively investigated include the impact of framing, the presence of regulatory focus variables such as the promotion- or prevention-focus of a message’s arguments, and the role of two-sided communications ( Cesario et al., 2008 Rucker et al., 2008). The role of positive and negative information as drivers of attitude change has been well-explored in the persuasion literature. Text has long been used in order to shape the attitudes of individuals. We argue that adopting a prevention- or promotion-focused stance can influence the interpretation of emotion words in relation to overall message comprehension. On promotion-focus features, messages containing negative words produced higher ratings for prevention-focus aspects, those with positive words resulted in higher ratings. While positive messages were always rated higher than negative ones, the valence of a message’s component words differentially impacted attitudes toward distinct aspects of the product. ![]() Using a 2 (Message: Positive, Negative) × 2 (Words: Positive, Negative) design, participants read car reviews and rated each on a series of semantic differentials and product recommendations. We investigated whether emotional language used within persuasive messages influenced attitudes and whether the processing of such communications could be modulated by regulatory focus. While many studies have investigated the role of message-level valence in persuasive messages (i.e., how positive or negative message content affects attitudes), none of these have examined whether word-level valence can modulate such effects.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |