Residual Emotional Arousal as a Distractor in Persuasion

Abstract

To test the effect of emotional arousal produced prior to exposure to a persuasive message on the impact of this message, subjects were exposed to a persuasive communication immediately after seeing one of four film stimuli selected and pretested to effect a factorial variation in (a) excitatory potential (low, high) and (b) hedonic tone (positive, negative). The subject's residual emotional response to the high-excitation films served as distraction from the subsequent message; the low-excitation films served as non-distracting controls. Different effects on persuasion were predicted from three distinct rationales, based on (a) the distractor's interference with counterarguing, (b) the distractor's interference with the learning of the message, and (c) generalization of the affective reaction produced by the distractor. Counter to all predictions, no significant effects of distraction were manifest. An unpredicted effect of hedonic tone was obtained, however; acceptance of the speaker's persuasive proposal was significantly greater following negative-hedonic than following positive-hedonic film stimuli. A post hoc explanation was attempted on the basis of a postulated “seriousness-set” brought about by the negative-hedonic stimuli.