ABSTRACT

After being largely ignored for many years, there has been a renewed interest in emotion among neuroscientists in recent years. Today, emotion is conceptualized as an organizing force related to key human goals and needs. In fact, emotions are seen as essential for rational, productive behavior. But, we must be careful not to confuse “emotion” with positive affect because not all affect states qualify as emotion. Emotions are always about affect states that have objects, but something like mood is an affect feeling state without a salient object (Clore & Ortony, 2000). Nor should we treat emotion and “feelings” as synonyms. Most theorists today define emotion in terms of a number of different components, generally around what is known as the “reaction triad”: physiological arousal, motor expression, and subjective feeling. By its nature, emotion will be involved in several of the communication components outlined in the Components of the Advertising Process Circle introduced in Figure 1.1. As we shall see, the emotion shown by people in advertising (Message Sources) and the emotional responses of those exposed to it (Receivers) will inform how it is processed; and, it will be part of every appeal (Messages) and influence a number of message effects (Effects). People experience a wide range of emotions, and many of these emotions are involuntarily expressed in things like facial expression, tone of voice, and body posture. Neuroscientists working with emotion may argue over specific emotions, but there is general agreement that there are primary emotions, along with other secondary or social emotions. Primary emotions like anger, fear, disgust, surprise, sadness, and joy are basic to all humans, and easily visible in one’s demeanor. Other emotions such as guilt, pride, envy, and so forth may be experienced by everyone, but how they are interpreted within a culture can differ. For example, in Western cultures there is a strong correlation between guilt and responsibility, but in other cultures guilt is not linked to responsibility. In this chapter we will first take a broad look at the way in which emotion is involved in how information is processed, paying particular attention to the role

of the amygdala. Then we examine the close relationship between emotion and motivation. This is important because effective advertising must elicit the appropriate emotions, consistent with the motivation driving the purchase decision for the advertised product. It also bears upon the choice of creative tactics needed to optimize the likelihood of eliciting that emotion. With this as a foundation, we then explore how emotion is specifically involved in the processing of advertising, paying particular attention to the embodiment of emotion.