Emotional Information Management and Responses to Emotional Appeals

Abstract

This research examines the role of emotional information management (comprised of emotion recognition, regulation, and empathy) in responses to public service appeals (PSAs) with emotional overtones. Whereas most theories of responses to emotional advertising, particularly fear appeals, focus on cognitive processing or coping strategies, we develop a model of emotional competencies and show how emotional information management (EIM) affects consumer responses to emotional appeals. Informed by affect as information theory, the EIM model suggests that managing negative emotions effectively should reduce empathetic responses to emotional ads while utilizing positive emotions should increase empathy. Empirical survey results demonstrate the efficacy of EIM for explaining how emotional appeals affect attitudes toward the ad (A _ad) and behavioral intentions (B_i ) to comply with both positively and negatively valenced anti-drunk driving commercials.