Opinions Based On Feelings Are Surprisingly Stable

By Emily Reynolds Emotional states can be fleeting and somewhat inexplicable — you can feel great one minute and down in the dumps the next, sometimes for no apparent reason. It follows, then, that opinions based on emotion are likely to be equally fleeting: if you’re in a bad mood when you take part in a survey or review a product, then surely the attitudes measured and recorded will be just as transient too. But according to a series of studies by Matthew D. Rocklage from the University of Massachusetts Boston and Andrew Luttrell from Ball State University, this isn’t actually the case. Instead, they report in Psychological Science, attitudes based in emotion are actually more stable: the more emotional an opinion, the less it changes over time. In the first study, participants were asked to think of three gifts they had recently received, before selecting their attitude towards the gift from a list of adjectives, some overtly negative, some overtly positive and some neutral, such as “amazing”, “boring”, “terrifying”, or “valuable”. Participants listed gifts ranging from electric toothbrushes to Star Wars figurines. One month later, participants were asked to think of the same gifts and again select adjectives that represented their feelings about them. After the second part of the study, the adjectives chosen by participants were coded for positive or negative valence, extremity, and emotionality. (Although these may seem similar, emo...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Emotion Source Type: blogs