The major goal of this research is to investigate the role of affect in persuasion and to examine the utility of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) for understanding and integrating prior research on affect. ELM holds that affect influences the amount and direction of persuasion by different processes in different situations. That is, peoples' moods and feelings can influence attitudes by (a) serving as simple cues; (b) providing issue-relevant information; (c) affecting the extent of information processing activity, and (d) influencing the nature of the thoughts that come to mind as a message is processed. Affect is postulated to have different effects depending upon a message recipient's overall motivation and ability to think about the communication. Experiments will be conducted to examine the different roles that a person's affective state can play in the persuasion process under different elaboration likelihood conditions. These are the critical experiments for testing the potential utility of the ELM for understanding the role of a person's transient moods and emotions in persuasion. When this research has been completed, we will have a better understanding of the link between affect and persuasion.
