Emotional Expressions in Antismoking Television Advertisements: Consequences of Anger and Sadness Framing on Pathways to Persuasion

Abstract

The authors conducted an experiment among U.S. college students (N = 115) to assess the effects of anger- and sadness-framed television antismoking advertisements on viewers' emotional response, impressions of the speaker, source likability, and empathy toward the speaker. The study was based on the fundamental assumptions of discrete emotions and was operationalized using the principles of universal facial expressions. The authors also constructed a path model to investigate how these variables predicted one's attitude toward smoking, attitude toward the tobacco industry, and intentions to smoke. Supporting study hypotheses, the anger-framed message increased the perceived dominance of the speaker relative to the other conditions. Perceived dominance, in turn, was negatively associated with smoking attitudes and, indirectly, smoking intentions. Contrary to study hypotheses, the sadness-framed message did not increase sad emotional responses, source likability, or empathy relative to the no emotion-framed message. The anger-framed message unexpectedly appeared to decrease these outcomes. Empathy and source likability were associated with positive attitudes toward the tobacco industry, but these attitudes did not predict intentions to smoke. The authors discuss the implications of these findings.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Ali Hamed, Jenna Tauber, and Samantha Cheirif for data collection, and anonymous reviewers for their insights and helpful comments.

Notes

Note. Means that do not share subscripts are significantly different (p < .05). All items were measured on 7-point scales. A 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) was used to measure anger response, sadness response, source likability, and empathy. Perceived competence and dominance were measured using a 7-point semantic differential scale, with higher scores indicating more perceived competence or more perceived dominance, respectively.

Note. The anger-framing manipulation variable was coded 1 for respondents in the anger-framing condition and 0 for all other respondents; the sadness-framing manipulation variable was coded 1 for respondents in the sadness-framing condition and 0 for all other respondents. Smoking status was coded as 1 for smokers (n = 25) and 0 for nonsmokers (n = 90). Gender was coded 1 for female (n = 75) and 0 for male (n = 40).

*p < .05. **p < .01.