Mood and Persuasion

TLDR

The study explores how happy and sad moods affect the processing of persuasive communications. It finds that sad‑mood participants are persuaded only by strong arguments, while happy‑mood participants respond similarly to strong and weak arguments unless directed to focus on content; distraction during message exposure removes the advantage of strong arguments for sad participants but not for happy participants, indicating that good‑mood individuals are less likely to elaborate on persuasive messages than bad‑mood individuals.

Abstract

The impact of happy and sad moods on the processing of persuasive communications is explored. In Experiment 1, sad subjects were influenced by a counter attitudinal message only if the arguments presented were strong, not if they were weak Happy subjects, however, were equally persuaded by strong and weak arguments, unless explicitly instructed to pay attention to the content of the message. Subjects' cognitive responses revealed a parallel pattern, suggesting that the findings reflect the impact of mood on cognitive elaboration of the message. In Experiment 2, working on a distractor task during message exposure eliminated the advantage of strong over weak arguments under bad-mood conditions. Good-mood subjects were not affected by a distracting task, suggesting that they did not engage in message elaboration to begin with. It is concluded that subjects in a good mood are less likely to engage in message elaboration than subjects in a bad mood.