Anger, frustration, boredom and the Department of Motor Vehicles: Can negative emotions impede organ donor registration?

RATIONALE The IIFF Model (Information, Immediate and Complete Registration Mechanism, Focused Engagement, Favorable Activation) offers a checklist of considerations for interventions seeking to influence organ donor registration behavior. One aspect of the model, favorable activation, recommends considering the emotional and motivational state of a potential donor registrant. Given that most donor registrations occur at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), we considered whether emotions experienced while at the DMV could influence registration rates. OBJECTIVE The current research effort investigated the emotions people experience while visiting the DMV, explored whether these emotions are associated with donor registration intentions, and experimentally assessed whether DMV experiences influence donor registration. METHODS Three studies were conducted through Amazon's Mechanical Turk. In Study 1, we randomly assigned participants to either recall a prior DMV experience or to a comparison condition. Emotions associated with the recalled experiences were the dependent variable. Study 2 assessed the correlations between nine different emotions and donor registration intentions. Study 3 randomly assigned participants to recall a prior frustrating DMV experience or to a comparison condition. Intention to register to donate was the dependent variable. RESULTS Study 1 found that recalling a prior DMV experience was associated with more negative and less positive emotions than the comparison condition. Study 2 found that increased levels of negative emotion could be problematic, as negative emotions were associated with decreased donor intentions. Study 3 found that recalling a frustrating DMV experience resulted in significantly lower intentions to register as an organ donor (vs. a control condition). CONCLUSION Although not all DMV experiences are negative, these data indicated a relationship between the DMV and negative emotions; an association between negative emotions and lower donor registration intentions; and, a causal relationship between negative DMV experiences and decreased registration intentions.