This program of research includes nine experiments in three interrelated project areas that build on prior findings about the role of emotions in human judgment and persuasion. The first project area examines the manner by which affect influences attitudes when people are highly motivated and able to think about a message. In particular, research will examine how temporary mood states influence people's judgments of the risks and benefits of various courses of action, and what the implications of this are for accepting or rejecting the conclusions of a persuasive advocacy. The second project area examines emotional (affective) versus rational (cognitive) persuasive messages and explores a controversy in the literature as to when each type of message is more likely to be effective. That is, if one's initial attitude is based mostly on emotional factors, is it better to challenge this attitude with an emotional or a rational appeal? The third project area examines the phenomenon of bias correction. People are sometimes aware of the fact that their moods and emotions can bias their judgments. To what extent do people attempt to correct for these presumed biases when they are made salient and what is the mechanism by which these corrections are made? Situations in which people "overcorrect" their judgments will also be explored. The latter phenomenon is interesting in that it suggests that people can sometimes become more biased the more they attempt to be unbiased (i.e., accurate) in their judgments. Although many of the most important health issues of our time involve such things as convincing fearful people to change their behaviors because of AIDS, or influencing depressed teenagers to seek help, relatively little is known about the role that emotions play in human judgment processes and in persuasion. The major goal of the proposed research is to continue a line of investigation on the role of emotion in human judgment. In general, this research examines how emotion influences peo ple's judgments in different situations such as when the issue is highly important or not, or when people are able to think carefully or not. For example, when an issue is not very important, people are expected to agree more with virtually any message when they are in a good rather than a bad mood regardless of the quality of the arguments given. As the importance of the issue increases, however, emotions are expected to influence judgments by different mechanisms such as by biasing the processing of the substantive arguments in the message. In such high processing situations, positive emotions can be associated with less rather than more influence such as when a person in a happy state rejects a message about smoking and cancer because the likelihood of getting cancer seems reduced when people are happy. This research has implications for understanding how emotions influence both mundane decision making such as product choices, and more important decisions such as changing one's job or seeking medical attention.
