Mood and Persuasion: A Cognitive Response Analysis
Herbert Bless, Gerd Bohner, Norbert Schwarz and Fritz Strack studied how happy and sad moods affect the processing of persuasive messages. In the first experiment, participants in a sad mood were persuaded by a message contrary to their views only when its arguments were strong, while happy participants were swayed by strong and weak arguments alike unless explicitly told to focus on the message content. Their cognitive responses showed the same pattern. In the second experiment a distracting task erased the advantage of strong arguments for participants in a bad mood and left those in a good mood unaffected. The authors conclude that people in good moods are less inclined to elaborate on persuasive messages.
Herbert Bless, Gerd Bohner, Norbert Schwarz and Fritz Strack studied how happy and sad moods affect the processing of persuasive messages. In the first experiment, participants in a sad mood were persuaded by a message contrary to their views only when its arguments were strong, while happy participants were swayed by strong and weak arguments alike unless explicitly told to focus on the message content. Their cognitive responses showed the same pattern. In the second experiment a distracting task erased the advantage of strong arguments for participants in a bad mood and left those in a good mood unaffected. The authors conclude that people in good moods are less inclined to elaborate on persuasive messages.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-22 via the publisher page.
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doi:10.1177/0146167290162013. Read at the level of the abstract.