Reactions to ideological websites: The impact of emotional appeals, credibility, and pre-existing attitudes

Ideological groups use websites to exert influence on individuals beliefs, values, and social identities. This often involves, using negative emotional appeals and credibility tactics to influence website users emotional responses, attitudes, and intentions. However, we know little about the joint effects of affective appeals and credibility, especially when pre-existing ideological attitudes are taken into account. This study manipulated emotional appeals and credibility, while accounting for users pre-existing attitudes and examined their direct and join influences on users emotional responses, attitudes, and intentions. A number of findings, including a 3-way interaction for message derogation, demonstrated the power of emotional appeals and how they can influence a website visitors emotions. As expected, preexisting attitudes were also found to be important when attempting to understand how viewers are influenced by ideological websites. This study manipulated emotional appeals and credibility on an ideological website.Users pre-existing attitudes were taken into account.The influences on users emotional responses, attitudes and intentions was examined.Credibility had an effect when it was paired with the other IVs.Emotional appeals provoke emotionally consistent responses in website viewers.

[1]  J. Mccroskey,et al.  Goodwill: A reexamination of the construct and its measurement , 1999 .

[2]  S. Chaiken,et al.  Attitude strength, attitude structure, and resistance to change , 1995 .

[3]  Karin Braunsberger.  The effects of source and product characteristics on persuasion. , 1996 .

[4]  N. Schwarz.  Feelings-as-information theory. , 2012 .

[5]  Iain Walker,et al.  Relative Deprivation: Specification, Development, and Integration , 2001 .

[6]  S. Chaiken,et al.  Attitude strength and resistance processes. , 1995, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[7]  W. Crano,et al.  Attitudes and persuasion. , 2006, Annual review of psychology.

[8]  E. Diener,et al.  The personality structure of affect. , 1995 .

[9]  David A. Pizarro,et al.  Emotion and Memory Research: A Grumpy Overview , 2004 .

[10]  Shane Connelly,et al.  Discrediting in a Message Board Forum: The Effects of Social Support and Attacks on Expertise and Trustworthiness , 2014, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[11]  Antony S R Manstead,et al.  Gender and culture differences in emotion. , 2004, Emotion.

[12]  Stewart J H McCann,et al.  Authoritarianism, Conservatism, Racial Diversity Threat, and the State Distribution of Hate Groups , 2009, The Journal of psychology.

[13]  Clark Hubbard,et al.  Happy Faces Elicit Heuristic Processing in a Televised Impression Formation Task: A Cognitive Tuning Account , 1997 .

[14]  Duane T. Wegener,et al.  The Impact of Attitude Accessibility on Elaboration of Persuasive Messages , 1998 .

[15]  Julie Fitness,et al.  Anger in the workplace: An emotion script approach to anger episodes between workers and their superiors, co-workers and subordinates , 2000 .

[16]  Teun A. van Dijk,et al.  Ideology and discourse analysis , 2005 .

[17]  C. Sunstein.  Republic.com 2.0 , 2007 .

[18]  Peter F. Jorgensen.  Affect, persuasion, and communication processes , 1996 .

[19]  Matthew L. Jensen,et al.  Ideological group persuasion: A within-person study of how violence, interactivity, and credibility features influence online persuasion , 2015, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[20]  Daniel J. O'Keefe,et al.  Elaboration Likelihood Model , 2013 .

[21]  Robin L. Nabi,et al.  Exploring the Framing Effects of Emotion , 2003, Commun. Res..

[22]  P. Blau.  Exchange and Power in Social Life , 1964 .

[23]  J. Forgas.  Affect in Social Judgments and Decisions: A Multiprocess Model , 1992 .

[24]  Jeremy B. Bernerth,et al.  A Critical Review and Best‐Practice Recommendations for Control Variable Usage , 2016 .

[25]  J. Victoroff.  The Mind of the Terrorist , 2005 .

[26]  J. Lerner,et al.  Emotion and decision making. , 2015, Annual review of psychology.

[27]  H. Kelley,et al.  Communication and Persuasion: Psychological Studies of Opinion Change , 1982 .

[28]  Matthew L. Jensen,et al.  Organizational balancing of website interactivity and control: An examination of ideological groups and the duality of goals , 2014, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[29]  C. A. J. Coady,et al.  Terrorism and Justice: Moral Argument in a Threatened World , 2002 .

[30]  Robin L. Nabi.  Reasoning through emotion: An explication and test of a cognitive-functional model for the effects of discrete negative emotions on information processing, attitude change, and recall , 1999 .

[31]  Matthew L. Jensen,et al.  Social Categorization, Moral Disengagement, and Credibility of Ideological Group Websites , 2016, J. Media Psychol. Theor. Methods Appl..

[32]  Matthew L. Jensen,et al.  Fear Appeals, Message Processing Cues, and Credibility in the Websites of Violent, Ideological, and Nonideological Groups , 2014, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[33]  Andrew Ortony,et al.  The Cognitive Structure of Emotions , 1988 .

[34]  Duane T. Wegener,et al.  Matching Versus Mismatching Attitude Functions: Implications for Scrutiny of Persuasive Messages , 1998 .

[35]  S. Chaiken.  Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source versus message cues in persuasion. , 1980 .

[36]  J. Mills,et al.  Opinion change as a function of the communicator's desire to influence and liking for the audience , 1966 .

[37]  Eva Ceulemans,et al.  Individual differences in patterns of appraisal and anger experience , 2007 .

[38]  J. Lerner,et al.  Beyond valence: Toward a model of emotion-specific influences on judgement and choice , 2000 .

[39]  Robert P. Abelson,et al.  Modes of resolution of belief dilemmas , 1959 .

[40]  Miriam J. Metzger,et al.  Perceptions of Internet Information Credibility , 2000 .

[41]  J. Lerner,et al.  Portrait of The Angry Decision Maker: How Appraisal Tendencies Shape Anger's Influence on Cognition. , 2006 .

[42]  Oliver Christ,et al.  Explaining radical group behavior: Developing emotion and efficacy routes to normative and nonnormative collective action. , 2011, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[43]  Randy Blazak,et al.  White Boys to Terrorist Men , 2001 .

[44]  William J. McGuire,et al.  The Effectiveness of Supportive and Refutational Defenses in Immunizing and Restoring Beliefs Against Persuasion , 1961 .

[45]  Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld,et al.  Hate Online: A Content Analysis of Extremist Internet Sites , 2003 .

[46]  H. Tajfel.  Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations , 1982 .

[47]  Muzafer Sherif,et al.  Attitude and Attitude Change: The Social Judgment-Involvement Approach , 1982 .

[48]  Shane Connelly,et al.  Studying Ideological Groups Online: Identification and Assessment of Risk Factors for Violence , 2011 .

[49]  P. V. Lange,et al.  Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology , 2011 .

[50]  Matthew L. Jensen,et al.  Ideological lens matters: Credibility heuristics, pre-existing attitudes, and reactions to messages on ideological websites , 2015, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[51]  Steven Prentice-Dunn,et al.  Protection motivation theory. , 1997 .

[52]  Miriam J. Metzger,et al.  behaviors on the perceived credibility of web-based information The role of site features, user attributes, and information verification , 2007 .

[53]  Jacquelyn A. Burkell,et al.  Believe it or not: Factors influencing credibility on the Web , 2002, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[54]  J. Krosnick,et al.  Development of attitude strength over the life cycle: surge and decline. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[55]  Craig A. Smith,et al.  Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion. , 1985, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[56]  Chanthika Pornpitakpan.  The Persuasiveness of Source Credibility: A Critical Review of Five Decades' Evidence , 2004 .

[57]  Matthew L. Jensen,et al.  Credibility and Interactivity: Persuasive Components of Ideological Group Websites , 2014, PERSUASIVE.

[58]  Richard E. Petty,et al.  Resisting persuasion by counterarguing: An attitude strength perspective. , 2004 .

[59]  B. J. Fogg,et al.  Persuasive technology: using computers to change what we think and do , 2002, UBIQ.

[60]  Patricia G. Devine,et al.  Attitude importance and resistance to persuasion : It's not just the thought that counts , 1996 .

[61]  Kim Witte,et al.  Examining the influence of trait anxiety/repression‐sensitization on individuals’ reactions to fear appeals , 2000 .

[62]  C. D. Ward,et al.  Better Liked than Right , 1980 .

[63]  Charles S. Taber,et al.  Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs , 2006 .

[64]  B. Verplanken,et al.  On the nature of attitude-behavior relations: the strong guide, the weak follow , 2002 .

[65]  Michael A. Hogg,et al.  A Social Identity Theory of Leadership , 2001 .

[66]  Daniel L. Sherrell,et al.  Source effects in communication and persuasion research: A meta-analysis of effect size , 1993 .

[67]  R. Lazarus.  Emotion and Adaptation , 1991 .

[68]  Miriam J. Metzger,et al.  Social and Heuristic Approaches to Credibility Evaluation Online , 2010 .

[69]  Mark S. Hamm.  American Skinheads: The Criminology and Control of Hate Crime , 1993 .

[70]  J. Brehm.  A theory of psychological reactance. , 1981 .

[71]  Michael S. Lewis-Beck,et al.  Party, Ideology, and Vote Intentions: Dynamics from the 2002 French Electoral Panel , 2006 .

[72]  Shane Connelly,et al.  Online Ideology: A Comparison of Website Communication and Media Use , 2013, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[73]  J. Lerner,et al.  Fear, anger, and risk. , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[74]  Kim Witte,et al.  Fear as motivator, fear as inhibitor: Using the extended parallel process model to explain fear appeal successes and failures. , 1996 .

[75]  C. I. Hovland,et al.  Social Judgment: Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Communication and Attitude Change , 1981 .

[76]  J. Mccroskey,et al.  Ethos and credibility: The construct and its measurement after three decades , 1981 .

[77]  Duane T. Wegener,et al.  Discrete emotions and persuasion: the role of emotion-induced expectancies. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[78]  C. I. Hovland,et al.  The Influence of Source Credibility on Communication Effectiveness , 1951 .

[79]  Heather C. Lench,et al.  Discrete emotions predict changes in cognition, judgment, experience, behavior, and physiology: a meta-analysis of experimental emotion elicitations. , 2011, Psychological bulletin.

[80]  J. Ray,et al.  A Scale to Measure Conservatism of American Public Opinion , 1983 .

[81]  Michael D. Mumford,et al.  Violence in Ideological and Non-Ideological Groups: A Quantitative Analysis of Qualitative Data , 2008 .

[82]  Ira J. Roseman,et al.  Appraisals of emotion-eliciting events: Testing a theory of discrete emotions. , 1990 .

[83]  K. Vohs,et al.  How Emotion Shapes Behavior: Feedback, Anticipation, and Reflection, Rather Than Direct Causation , 2007, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[84]  Michael Pfau,et al.  Efficacy of inoculation strategies in promoting resistance to political attack messages: Application to direct mail , 1990 .

[85]  J. Mccroskey.  Scales for the measurement of ethos , 1966 .

[86]  K Witte,et al.  The perception of risk messages regarding electromagnetic fields: extending the extended parallel process model to an unknown risk. , 1998, Health communication.