The persuasive power of emotions: Effects of emotional expressions on attitude formation and change

Despite a long-standing interest in the intrapersonal role of affect in persuasion, the interpersonal effects of emotions on persuasion remain poorly understood—how do one person’s emotional expressions shape others’ attitudes? Drawing on emotions as social information (EASI) theory (Van Kleef, 2009), we hypothesized that people use the emotional expressions of others to inform their own attitudes, but only when they are sufficiently motivated and able to process those expressions. Five experiments support these ideas. Participants reported more positive attitudes about various topics after seeing a source’s sad (rather than happy) expressions when topics were negatively framed (e.g., abandoning bobsleighing from the Olympics). Conversely, participants reported more positive attitudes after seeing happy (rather than sad) expressions when topics were positively framed (e.g., introducing kite surfing at the Olympics). This suggests that participants used the source’s emotional expressions as information when forming their own attitudes. Supporting this interpretation, effects were mitigated when participants’ information processing was undermined by cognitive load or was chronically low. Moreover, a source’s anger expressions engendered negative attitude change when directed at the attitude object and positive change when directed at the recipient’s attitude. Effects occurred regardless of whether emotional expressions were manipulated through written words, pictures of facial expressions, film clips containing both facial and vocal emotional expressions, or emoticons. The findings support EASI theory and indicate that emotional expressions are a powerful source of social influence

No Guts, No Glory? How Risk-Taking Shapes Dominance, Prestige, and Leadership Endorsement

Risk-taking can fuel innovation and growth, but it can also have devastating consequences for individuals and organizations. Here we examine whether risk-taking affords social-hierarchical benefits to risk-takers. Specifically, we investigate how risk-taking influences perceived dominance, prestige, and the willingness to endorse risk-takers’ leadership. Integrating insights from costly signaling theory and the dominance/ prestige framework of social rank, we theorized that risk-taking increases leadership endorsement to the degree that it fuels perceptions of prestige, but decreases leadership endorsement to the degree that it fuels perceptions of dominance. However, we also hypothesized that risk-induced perceptions of dominance do translate into leadership endorsement in competitive (rather than cooperative) intergroup settings. We tested these hypotheses in four studies involving different samples, methods, and operationalizations. In Study 1, participants performed an implicit association test (IAT) that revealed that people associate risk with leader positions, and safety with follower positions. Study 2 was a longitudinal field survey conducted during the September 2019 Israeli elections, which showed that voters’ perceptions of politicians’ risk-taking propensities prior to the elections positively predicted perceived dominance and prestige as well as voting behavior during the elections. Finally, Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that people are willing to support risktakers as leaders in the context of competitive (as opposed to cooperative) intergroup situations, because perceived dominance positively predicts leadership endorsement in competitive (but not cooperative) intergroup settings. We discuss implications for understanding the social dynamics of organizational rank and the perpetuation of risky behavior in organizations, politics, and society at large

Regulating deviance with emotions: Emotional expressions as signals of acceptance and rejection

An individual group member’s deviant behavior can provoke strong emotional reactions from other group members. I have investigated the role of such emotional reactions in regulating deviance by investigating how the deviant is influenced by these emotional reactions. The idea that angry reactions signal rejection, and that happy reactions signal acceptance is introduced to predict this influence. In the first empirical chapter, I find that happy are implicitly associated with acceptance, and that angry expressions are associated with rejection. In the second empirical chapter, I investigated the mathematical relation between the number of angry reactions and the extent to which a deviant feels rejected, and found that every single angry reaction to deviance increases the extent to which the deviant feels rejected. In the last empirical chapter, I find that angry reactions to deviance can elicit lasting conformity if (a) re-acceptance is desirable and (b) conformity is instrumental in gaining re-acceptance. Together, these findings indicate that group members influence each other through the emotional reactions to each others' behavior, and that the emotional reactions that deviance provokes helps regulate deviance in groups. Based on these findings, I propose an extended theoretical model in which emotional reactions to deviance influence the deviant's behavior through two simultaneous motives, retaliation and reconnection. I discuss new insights that follow from this model, as well as more general implications that follow from my dissertation as a whole, for theorizing about the social functions of emotions in general, and in groups specifically

Measuring the effect of Russian Internet Research Agency information operations in online conversations

The Internet has given new opportunities to those who wish to interfere and disrupt society through the systematic manipulation of social media. One goal of these cyber-enabled information operations is to increase polarisation in Western societies by stoking both sides of controversial debates. Whether these operations are successful remains unclear. This paper describes how novel applications of computational techniques can be used to test the impact of historical activity from the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) on two social media platforms: Twitter and Reddit. We show that activity originating from the Russian IRA had a measurable effect on the subsequent conversations of genuine users. On Twitter, increases in Russian IRA activity predicted subsequent increases in the degree of polarisation of the conversation surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement. On Reddit, comment threads started by Russian IRA accounts contained more toxic language and identitybased attacks. We use causal analysis modelling to further show that Russian IRA activity in existing threads caused measurable changes in the conversational quality of the following 25-100 posts. By developing methods to measure the impact of information operations in online conversations and demonstrating a measurable effect on genuine conversations, our study provides an important step in developing effective countermeasures

Emotional influence in groups: The dynamic nexus of affect, cognition, and behavior

Groups are a natural breeding ground for emotions. Group life affords unique opportunities but also poses critical challenges that may arouse emotional reactions in group members. Social-functional approaches hold that these emotions in turn contribute to group functioning by prompting group members to address concerns that are relevant to the group's success. Guided by Emotions as Social Information (EASI) theory, this paper reviews research on the affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences of emotional expressions in groups. Affective processes include emotional contagion and affective convergence, and resulting states such as group affective tone and affective diversity. Cognitive processes include inferences group members draw from each other's emotional expressions. We discuss how these affective and cognitive processes shape behavior and group functioning. We conclude that the traditional (over)emphasis on affective processes must be complemented with a focus on cognitive processes to develop a more complete understanding of the social dynamics of emotions in groups