Editing Appeal to emotion (section)

==Research==

Accepted wisdom{{who|date=December 2014}} is that, "[w]hen it comes to issues of emotional importance, convincing someone to change his or her existing beliefs appears to be a virtually hopeless undertaking."<ref>"The Influence of Emotions on Beliefs", Nico Frijda, Antony Manstead and Sasha Bem in ''Emotions and Beliefs'', Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 3.</ref> And yet, manipulating emotions may help change attitudes:
::"[t]he use of emotions to instill beliefs is prevalent in [[political propaganda]]. Depicting individuals, groups, or issues from an emotional perspective, or as actors in emotional events, evokes emotion. It thereby slips the belief that the emotion is about into the listener's mind. Presumably, it slips the beliefs into the listener's mind more easily, smoothly and unquestioned than would happen when the information alone was transmitted."<ref>"Beliefs through Emotions", Nico H. Frijda and Batja Mesquita in ''Emotions and Beliefs'', N. Frijda, A. Manstead and S. Bem, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 47.</ref>

Though it is still an underdeveloped topic of research, a number of scholars are demonstrating that manipulating emotions concerning a persuasive message does affect that message's effectiveness. It has been shown, for example, that people tend to adjust their beliefs to conform with their emotions, since feelings are treated by people as evidence, and when feelings match beliefs, that is considered as validation of the beliefs.<ref>"Feeling is believing: Some affective influences on belief", Gerald L. Clore and Karen Gasper in ''Emotions and Beliefs'', N. Frijda, A. Manstead and S. Bem, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 25, 26.</ref> Other research shows that "emotional stimuli can influence judgment without a judge's awareness of having seen or felt anything (e.g., Bargh, 1997; Murphy & Zajonc, 1993)."<ref>"Feeling is believing: Some affective influences on belief", Gerald L. Clore and Karen Gasper in ''Emotions and Beliefs'', N. Frijda, A. Manstead and S. Bem, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 13.</ref>

Indeed, "recent studies have confirmed that affect does play a general role in attitude change, whether due to persuasive communication, or to [[cognitive dissonance]] processes (Petty et al., 2001)".<ref>Joseph P. Forgas, "The Role Of Affect In Attitudes And Attitude Change," in ''Attitudes and Attitude Change'', William Crano & Radmila Prislin, Ed, Psychology Press, 2008, p. 145.</ref>

Psychologists Petty & Cacioppo found that there are two ways of processing persuasive messages: (1) to emphasize the content and quality of the message (central processing), or (2) to emphasize instead external cues (such as the source of the message) and to disregard its content (peripheral processing). "When participants use the central/systematic route of responding to message content, they tend to be persuaded more by strong arguments, and less by weak arguments. However, the strength of the argument matters less when the peripheral route is chosen. In that case, other "peripheral" factors, such as the credibility of the source of the message or the intention of the communicator become important in the persuasive process."  Petty and Cacioppo suggest that negative affect should result in more central processing and positive affect to more peripheral processing. That is, "In happy moods, people tend to be persuaded equally by strong and weak arguments, whereas in sad moods, people are persuaded only by strong arguments and reject weak arguments."<ref>"The Influence of Affect on Attitude, Gerald Clore and Simone Schnall, in Dolores Albarracin et al., ''The Handbook of Attitudes'', Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2005, pp. 465–471</ref> Said otherwise, positive moods encourage easy acceptance of arguments, while negative moods encourage the changing of beliefs due to significant data.<ref>Klaus Fiedler and Herbert Bless, "The formation of beliefs at the interface of affective and cognitive processes," in ''Emotions and Beliefs'', N. Frijda, A. Manstead and S. Bem, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 165</ref>

Referring to the work of Marcus, political scientist Tom Brader says that, "by appealing to specific emotions, [communicators] can change the way citizens respond to political messages".<ref>Ted Brader, ''Campaigning for Hearts and Minds," University of Chicago Press, 2006, p. 18</ref>