Recent years has seen an expansion of literature on the effects of emotions in eWOM. Theories on attribution, source credibility, and the relationship between informative value and perceived...Show moreRecent years has seen an expansion of literature on the effects of emotions in eWOM. Theories on attribution, source credibility, and the relationship between informative value and perceived rationality have given rise to a multitude of experiments on the effects of emotions on eWOM. This body of literature has shown that expressions of anger in online reviews lower the informative value of the review. The current research investigates the effects of reviewer history on an angry review of a hotel. Specifically, what effects a consistent angry, consistent happy or a mixed reviewer history has on the informative value of an angry target review, the perceived rationality of the reviewer and the intention to visit the hotel. Results indicate that a consistently angry reviewer history lowers informative value of a target review with expressions of anger and also lowers the perceived rationality of a reviewer, while the intention to visit the hotel reviewed in the target review is stronger. Finally, we discussed the results, implications and limitations of the current research.Show less
Prejudice is an emotion-specific phenomenon that is influenced by a variety of predictors. In this paper, we looked at interoceptive sensitivity (IS) as a potential determinant of prejudice through...Show morePrejudice is an emotion-specific phenomenon that is influenced by a variety of predictors. In this paper, we looked at interoceptive sensitivity (IS) as a potential determinant of prejudice through emotional sensitivity, especially disgust. We had five hypotheses including the last one being exploratory. (1) Higher IS would lead to higher prejudice. (2) Greater IS would lead to higher disgust sensitivity (DS). (3) Greater DS would lead to higher prejudice. (4) Greater IS would lead to increased prejudice through increased DS. (5) Higher IS would lead to increased prejudice through different emotional sensitives (fear, anger, disgust). IS was measured using a heartbeat detection task and other variables were measured using questionnaires. Regression analysis was used to analyze the results. As part of the exploratory analysis, principal component analysis was used to identify potential prejudice subscales. Findings showed all the hypotheses to be insignificant. The key finding of exploratory analysis is that IS was not significantly related to any of the emotion specific prejudice measures. Main limitations were the sample size and its characteristics. In the future, complex emotions could be examined within this analysis and disgust could be manipulated to see if prejudice towards disgust eliciting groups change.Show less
Researchers have tried to link the motivation to experience certain emotions to specific ideologies. Recently there has been more support for taking context into account when studying the influence...Show moreResearchers have tried to link the motivation to experience certain emotions to specific ideologies. Recently there has been more support for taking context into account when studying the influence of ideology on the motivation to experience an emotion. One of these contextual factors is the belief that an emotion can reinforce one’s ideology. Therefore, this study investigated whether the belief that anger reinforces one’s ideology motivates one to experience anger. Additionally, we tested whether leftists are more motivated to experience hope than rightists and whether rightists are more motivated to experience fear than leftists. The belief that anger reinforces one’s ideology was induced by reading a scientific article about anger and ideology. To test if participants were then more motivated to experience an emotion, participants created a ranking of their preference for reading anger, hope, fear and no emotion inducing articles. We found that reading an article that states that anger reinforces one’s ideology does not motivate one more to experience anger. There was also no evidence that leftists are more motivated to experience hope than rightists or that rightists are more motivated to experience fear than leftists. These results show the difficulty of convincing one that anger reinforces one’s ideology and that one can be hesitant to want to experience anger. The results that hope was not tied to leftists and fear not tied to rightists can be explained by the influence of a state of fear in the participants due to the use of Coronavirus-related stimuli. These findings indicate that future research should also take other contextual factors into account, like one’s current emotional state, when studying the influence of beliefs about emotions on motivated emotion regulation.Show less
The aim of this study was to find out whether the belief that anger reinforces your ideology can motivate you to feel anger. To investigate this, we conducted an online study where participants...Show moreThe aim of this study was to find out whether the belief that anger reinforces your ideology can motivate you to feel anger. To investigate this, we conducted an online study where participants read an article on how anger can strengthen the ideological convictions of leftists or rightists and were then asked to rank eight headlines in the order that they would want to read the corresponding articles. Six of these headlines were designed to indicate that their corresponding articles would induce either anger, fear or hope, while two of them were neutral in content. The participants’ preference for the headlines was intended to measure their motivation to experience the emotion that the headline was correlated with. The main hypothesis was that participants reading about how anger reinforces their ideology would want to engage with anger-inducing content more than participants in the other conditions. Unfortunately, the results were non-significant and the hypothesis was rejected. The participants were not more motivated to choose anger-inducing headlines after reading about how anger reinforces their ideology. Descriptively, the fear-related headlines were the most preferred out of all headlines. This can be due to a multitude of factors, the most important being the coronavirus pandemic, which could have influenced the preference for fear.Show less
Background. Anger is experienced in various mental disorders. Based on increased mental health problems in students and the adversity of the coronavirus pandemic, (1) the relations between anger,...Show moreBackground. Anger is experienced in various mental disorders. Based on increased mental health problems in students and the adversity of the coronavirus pandemic, (1) the relations between anger, depression, anxiety, stress, and being occupied with COVID-19 were explored. As traits predict interpersonal events and states identify events under situational control, it was investigated (2) if baseline trait anger predicted average state anger during a period of self-isolation to test if anger levels were determined by general tendencies, and (3) if trait and average state anger differed within and between men and women to test if the groups were affected differently by situational factors. Methods. (1) Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) data was collected from 79 undergraduates from Dutch universities, with surveys prompted via smartphone four times daily for 14 days. Contemporaneous, temporal, and between-subjects networks were computed. (2) In a multiple regression analysis, average EMA state anger was regressed on trait anger while controlling for gender, age, depression, anxiety, and stress. (3) A mixed-design analysis of covariance included standardized type of anger as a within-factor and gender as a between-factor while controlling for differences in mental health. Results. (1) Contemporaneously, anger was positively associated with irritability, feeling nervous and anhedonia. Temporally, anger and irritability positively predicted each other. Anger positively predicted difficulty to relax and itself. Between-subjects, anger was positively associated with irritability and feeling nervous but negatively with being occupied with COVID-19. (2) Trait anger did not significantly predict average EMA anger, whereas the covariate stress did. (3) Despite significantly lower trait anger compared to women, men displayed significantly increased average EMA anger in relation to their trait levels. Trait and average EMA anger did not differ within women. Conclusion. EMA anger was persistently related to stress, less likely to be the source or recipient of activation compared to other constructs, not strongly linked to trait, and increased in relation to trait levels only in the male group. Differences between our healthy participants and a clinical sample encourage an investigation of anger in phase transitions towards psychopathology and its potentially adaptive effects in healthy individuals.Show less
