“Corporate pathos”: new approaches to quell hostile publics

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review work on the power and importance of emotional appeals from a range of disciplines including philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, linguistics and advertising. It aims to illustrate the growing body of evidence and theory that emotions play a vital part in how we shape and alter our attitudes and behaviours. By contrast many PR practitioners have been slow to recognise the importance of these new findings and do not regularly consider how emotional appeals can help enhance reputations or limit criticism. It further suggests that to date the PR professional has lacked a workable framework around which the importance of emotions can be understood and subsequently used to aid the planning and delivery of public relations programmes.Design/methodology/approach – To aid the practitioner a new framework is suggested; newly referred to as corporate pathos. This approach allows for emotional appeals to be systematically analysed and provides corporate PR...