Effects of emotional expressions on persuasion

This paper investigates how expressions of emotion affect persuasiveness when the expresser and the recipient have different levels of power. The first study demonstrates that when the recipient overpowers the expresser, emotional expressions reduce persuasion. A second study reveals that power and perceived appro-priateness of emotional expressions independently moderate the effect of emotional expressions. Emotional expressions hamper persuasion when the recipient overpowers the expresser, or when the emotional expressions are considered inappropriate. Introduction Expressers' emotional expressions affect recipients' behavior in various social settings including personal relationships, parent–child interactions, and in arenas of conflict, negotiation, and leadership (Van Kleef, 2009). For instance, customers express greater satisfaction when a service provider is smiling (Barger & Grandey, 2006), and voters show more support for politicians who express anger 2010) proposes that people extract social information from others' emotional expressions and use this information to guide their decisions. Studies in varied fields have suggested that the effects of emotional expressions differ from context to context. While some social contexts such as negotiation have received much attention, the interpersonal effects of emotional expressions on persuasion remain poorly understood (Van Kleef, Van den Berg, & Heerdink, 2015). Although there exists a large body of research in the context of persuasion, the main focus has been on the intrapersonal effects of emotion (i.e., how one's own emotion affects the way he/she is persuaded; e.g., Petty, Fabrigar, & Wegener, 2003) as well as the impact of emotional framing (e.g., the effect of framing a persuasive message to match the recipient's emotion; e. 2004). However, far fewer studies have investigated the interpersonal effects of emotions in the context of persuasion (i.e., how an expresser's emotional expressions affect persuasion of the recipient).