ABSTRACT
The systematic study of emotional influences on social information processing is a rather recent topic of research, even though its origins can be traced to the beginning of the 20th century. Among these precursors are Freud's (1915) notion of repressed memories for unpleasant materials, early emotion theories that emphasize the interrupt function of emotional reactions (cf. Frijda, 1986), the Yerkes-Dodson (1908) law that posits an inverted U-function between emotional arousal and cognitive performance, McDougall's (1928) emphasis on the communicative-informative function of emotions, and behaviorist research on conditioned emotional reactions (Watson & Rayner, 1920). Later, after World War II, important additional impulses came from Easterbrook's (1959) thesis that span of apprehension decreases with increasing arousal, and from Janis and Feshbach's (1953) seminal work on the disruptive effects of fear appeals in persuasive communication.
