The Effect of Affect: An Appraisal Theory Perspective on Emotional Engagement in Narrative Persuasion

Abstract

Most recent research examining the influence of story-based advertisements on persuasion leverages theories of narrative and character involvement. These theories emphasize emotional engagement as key to stories’ persuasive influence. Researchers who build on these theories tend to assume that an audience will experience the emotions depicted by a focal character and examine emotional engagement with respect to intensity (i.e., amount of emotion experienced). The current work integrates insights from the appraisal theory of emotion to develop a framework of audience emotional engagement in stories. We expand the current conceptualization of emotional engagement in narratives to include the discrete emotion experienced while involved in the story as well as the event appraisals that elicit the emotions. We highlight antecedents of an audience’s emotional response to a story and ways in which the appraisal theme associated with the discrete emotion experienced while emotionally engaged in a narrative ad explains variance in outcomes of importance to advertisers.

Notes

1 We focus on consumers’ emotional responses to their experience of involvement in the story-based advertisement, such as a response to what happens to a character or how a story ends; we use the term emotional engagement to characterize this experience. People may experience emotional reactions to a story if they are not involved (such as irritation with watching an unengaging story-based ad) or in general (such as positive emotions in response to messages featuring babies or celebrities; Tellis et al. 2019). However, these types of emotional responses are not specific to processing narratives and are beyond the scope of the current work.

2 Notably, there is work outside of the advertising narrative and character involvement literatures, such as research related to affective disposition theory (Raney 2004; Zillmann 1994), which considers instances in which audiences feel an emotion that is not featured in the story at hand. We return to a discussion of this literature subsequently.

3 Research on emotion and appraisals generally supports Smith and Ellsworth’s basic appraisal dimensions (Yih et al. 2019), though other scholars have proposed additional dimensions (e.g., other-benefit; Manstead, Tetlock, and Manstead 1989), conceptualized them in a slightly different way (e.g., legitimacy versus responsibility; Roseman 1984), and even suggested that there are novel, unidentified appraisal dimensions that underlie emotions (So et al. 2015). The present research generally leverages the classic appraisal dimensions identified by Smith and Ellsworth, but does incorporate other appraisal dimensions that are relevant for the context discussed.

4 Here, we conceptualize emotional engagement as part of the audience’s overall narrative and character involvement and consider the (direct) effects of different discrete emotions on advertiser-desired outcomes. We do not consider emotional intensity in this section (as it has been the focus of past research), but view this dimension as a potential moderator; the more intense an audience’s experience of a discrete emotion in response to a story-based ad, the more likely their beliefs and behavior will be influenced in line with the emotion’s appraisal theme.

5 We would like to note that we do not use the phrase “awareness and salience of the focal product” to indicate recognition that the story may have persuasive intent; rather, we use the phrase to indicate that a viewer recognizes a product’s appearance and causal relationships in a storyline in the same way that a viewer might recognize the appearance of a character.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne Hamby

Anne Hamby (PhD, Virginia Tech) is an assistant professor of marketing, College of Business and Economics, Boise State University,

Niusha Jones

Niusha Jones (PhD, University of North Texas) is an assistant professor of marketing, College of Business and Economics, Boise State University.