The role of emotion in persuasion was initially thought of strictly in terms of a main affect of valence. Early theorists posited that inducing a positive emotional state in individuals would lead to more persuasion, whereas inducing a negative emotional would lead to less persuasion. Researchers in this field eventually established clear boundary conditions for this initial perspective, noting that both positive and negative emotional states could either increase or decrease persuasion. However, research in emotion and persuasion continues to be thought of in terms of positive and negative valence, failing to distinguish the importance of distinct emotional states of the same valence. For example, while both sadness and anger are negative emotional states, they are clearly different qualitatively. The goal of the present research is to demonstrate the role of message framing and distinct emotional states in persuasion. This is accomplished by placing participants in a sad, angry, or neutral mood and exposing them to a persuasive message framed with arguments that contain either sad or angering events expected to occur if the proposal is not adopted.. Prior research has shown that matching the framing of a message to an emotional state increases how likely participants believe the events described are to occur. It is hypothesized that increasing perceptions of likelihoods will lead to more acceptance of the message, thus more persuasion when the message frame and emotional state match, rather than mismatch. Additional studies are designed to further explore this notion.
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