ABSTRACT
In our current intellectual climate, it should come as no surprise to find a chapter revolving around emotion in a volume highlighting social cognition. Indeed, the connection between thought and feeling is currently well-accepted, with evidence originating from multiple domains of psychology, including neurobiology, memory, information processing, personality, and others (see Forgas, 2001, for a range of related perspectives). However, at the time Roloff and Berger’s (1982) volume was published, the study of emotion and persuasion was primarily confined to the study of fear appeals, which had taken on a decidedly cognitively based orientation, replacing the motivational perspective that had dominated from midcentury into the 1970s (e.g., Leventhal, 1970; Rogers, 1975, 1983). Since then, growing interest in emotion throughout psychology has led to increased theorizing, not only about the persuasive effects of fear (e.g., Witte, 1992) but also an array of other emotions (e.g., Nabi, 1999). Further, dominant paradigms of persuasion have recently begun to incorporate affect-based constructs to better understand the role emotions may play in the processes of attitude and behavior change.
