Mixed emotional appeal enhances positive word-of-mouth: The moderating role of narrative person

Underpinned by feelings-as-information theory and construal level theory, this present research examines the effect of mixed emotions in advertising on word of mouth (WOM) and the moderating role of a narrative person. Two experiments were conducted featuring two different products (cake mix in Study 1; watch in Study 2) and different narratives to elicit mixed emotions. The objective of Study 1 was to confirm the moderating effect of the narrative person on the relationship between mixed emotion and positive WOM. Study 2 aimed to provide stronger empirical evidence for the findings of Study 1 and test the mediating effects of inspiration (when it uses a third-person narration) and discomfort (when it uses the first-person narration). In general, the results show that a mixed emotional appeal is more effective than pure happiness in increasing positive WOM when the third-person narration is used. The relationship between mixed emotions and WOM is mediated by inspiration (when using a third-person narration) and discomfort (when using the first-person narration). This extends previous research which provides inconclusive evidence on the consequences of mixed emotional appeal. The current study also broadens the application of linguistics in emotion and consumer behavior literature while providing important implications for marketers in their advertising strategy.     

Emotions,deliberations, and end‐of‐life products

Death is inevitable; yet, not all consumers prepare for death by purchasing end‐of‐life (EOL) products. Using the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the dual‐process model framework, this study aims to examine the role of emotions and cognitions in influencing consumers' decisions to engage in planning for death. A mixed methodology design was used. Study 1, a qualitative study, uncovered positive and negative emotions and deliberative reasoning that comprise consumers' EOL purchase decision process. Study 2, a quantitative study, confirmed that emotions and deliberations independently and jointly influenced consumers' EOL attitude and behavior and that emotions affected deliberations for both prepaid funerals and wills. Subjective norms outperformed attitude in predicting both products' purchase behavior. These finding supported the dual‐process model of behavior and the TRA in the EOL research context and contributed to the EOL literature by investigating the effects of emotions and deliberations concurrently; thus validating the important role of emotions in influencing EOL planning and purchase. In light of our findings, marketers could, after due cognizance of the morbidity and sensitivity of the topic, develop actionable promotional and segmentation strategies for EOL products and other emotion‐laden, unsought products and service.     

Schadenfreude: The (not so) Secret Joy of Another’s Misfortune

Despite growing interest in emotions, organizational scholars have largely ignored the moral emotion of schadenfreude, which refers to pleasure felt in response to another’s misfortune. As a socially undesirable emotion, it might be assumed that individuals would be hesitant to share their schadenfreude. In two experimental studies involving emotional responses to unethical behaviors, we find evidence to the contrary. Study 1 revealed that subjects experiencing schadenfreude were willing to share their feelings, especially if the misfortune was perceived to be deserved (i.e., resulting from unethical behaviors). Study 2 extends this work by incorporating schadenfreude targets of different status (CEO versus employee). Consistent with the “tall poppy syndrome,” subjects were more willing to share schadenfreude concerning high status targets than low status targets when the perceived severity of the target’s misconduct was low. This status effect disappeared at higher levels of perceived deservingness, however. Reported willingness to share schadenfreude was strongest at these levels but did not differ significantly between high and low status targets. These findings build on the social functional account of emotions, suggesting that sharing schadenfreude may signal normative cues to others regarding workplace behaviors that are deemed to be unethical.     

Feeling grateful versus happy? The effects of emotional appeals in advertisements on self-made products

Increasingly, researchers are putting their efforts into understanding more about self-made products (e.g. reasons for purchasing these type of products). Nevertheless, it remains poorly understood as to how to effectively promote such products. Understanding whether using emotions (e.g. gratitude) in an advertisement may increase the effectiveness of advertising is still open to debate. Based on the cognitive theory of emotions, in the present study, the effect of emotional appeals on purchase intentions is explored through three experiments. Study 1 examines the effect of gratitude (vs. no-appeal) on consumer's click through behavior for self-made products. The results show that gratitude appeal poses a stronger effect on consumers' click through behavior for self-made products as opposed to no appeal. Study 2 provides further evidence of the gratitude effect (versus happiness, no-appeal) on purchase intention for self-made products in comparison to pre-made ones. Finally, Study 3 establishes desire to put in more effort as an underpinning mechanism for gratitude appeal and adds level of effort as a moderator. The findings suggest that marketers should incorporate gratitude appeal into their advertisements to increase consumers' purchase intentions by stimulating the desire to put in more effort.     

Anger Strays,Fear Refrains: The Differential Effect of Negative Emotions on Consumers’ Ethical Judgments

Although various factors have been studied for their influence on consumers’ ethical judgments, the role of incidental emotions has received relatively less attention. Recent research in consumer behavior has focused on studying the effect of specific incidental emotions on various aspects of consumer decision making. This paper investigates the effect of two negative, incidental emotional states of anger and fear on ethical judgment in a consumer context using a passive unethical behavior scenario (i.e., too much change received). The paper presents two experimental studies. Study 1 focuses on the interaction of moral intensity (amount of change) and incidental emotion state in predicting the ethical judgment while study 2 investigates the underlying causal mechanism behind the process, using a mediation analysis. The results reveal a significant interaction between moral intensity and incidental emotion. Specifically, individuals in the state of incidental fear exhibit higher levels of ethical judgment as the moral intensity increases as compared to individuals in the state of incidental anger. Further, perceived control is found to mediate the relationship between emotional state and ethical judgment under higher moral intensity condition.     

Guilt and Shame: Environmental Message Framing Effects

The authors examine how two negative emotions—guilt and shame—influence responses to environmental ad messages framed as gains or losses. In Study 1, participants primed with guilt express higher intention to conserve water after they view a gain-framed water conservation ad; participants primed with shame express higher conservation intention after they view a loss-framed ad. Study 2 replicates and supports the proposed matching hypothesis using nonstudent adults. In Study 3, participants react to a recycling ad as they did in Studies 1 and 2 when they expend high effort by transcribing the recycle pledge before they view the ad, but not when they expend low effort by reading the pledge first. The findings overall provide converging evidence for the interplay between negative emotions and message framing. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed for developing environmental advertising message strategies.     

以眼还眼：职场排斥对沉默行为的影响

本研究基于社会互动视角,探讨职场排斥与沉默行为的过程机制,在此基础上提出一个调节的中介模型,特别是工作投入和感知凝聚力的中介作用和情绪智力的调节作用。通过213名员工的三阶段时间滞后调查分析,结果显示：职场排斥正向影响沉默行为;工作投入和感知凝聚力在职场排斥与沉默行为关系中发挥中介作用;情绪智力调节职场排斥与工作投入之间的关系,调节职场排斥和感知凝聚力之间的关系;此外,情绪智力调节“职场排斥-工作投入-沉默行为”和“职场排斥-感知凝聚力-沉默行为”这两条中介路径。     

Keeping anger in check: The role of personal and organizational characteristics on behavioral outcomes

ABSTRACT

The food and beverage sector of the hospitality industry is known for being an emotionally labor-intensive environment. The events that transpire over the course of a shift lead to various emotions, which ultimately dictate the behaviors of the employees working in this industry. Of particular interest to this study was the interplay between environmental antecedents (power and distributive justice) and their influence on a negative emotion (anger) and a positive emotion (affective organizational commitment). Additionally, this study sought to understand how anger and affective organizational commitment influenced positive (organizational citizenship behavior) and negative (counterproductive work behavior) workplace behaviors using the lens of the affective events theory. The results of this study revealed that anger had the strongest effect on counterproductive work behavior and that all of the relationships were significant except from anger to affective organizational commitment and affective organizational commitment to counterproductive work behavior.     

Employees striving for innovation in social enterprises: The roles of social mission and commitment-based human resource management

Social enterprises, promising organizations for solving societal problems with innovative approaches, rely upon their members’ active roles for workplace innovation. However, we still have a limited understanding about how social enterprises can foster employees’ endeavors for innovation. By focusing on employee learning and innovative behavior, we investigate the influences of perceived social mission, value congruence, and human resource management (HRM) practices in social enterprises. We conducted two complementary studies to answer our research questions. In Study 1, with a survey of 369 employees from 68 social enterprises, we examined a multilevel moderated mediation model with firm-level and individual-level data. We found that perceived social mission promoted learning and innovative behavior by increasing value congruence, and that commitment-based HRM practices enhanced the overall process from mission to employee efforts for innovation. In Study 2, with 300 daily surveys from 60 employees participating in an experience sampling study, we found that those with high-value congruence showed a significantly more stable pattern with less variance in innovative behavior than in learning behavior. Our study adds novel implications to the underdeveloped literature on employee innovation and HRM in social enterprises by uncovering the positive effects of social mission and value facets for boosting learning and innovative behaviors. Our research also suggests that social enterprises should benefit from pursuing and emphasizing the social mission and commitment-based HRM bundle together, which will promote the prosperity and well-being of business and society.     

Pride in my past: Influencing sustainable choices through behavioral recall

Emotional appraisal research has demonstrated that recalling a past behavior and its associated emotions can influence future behavior. However, how such recalled emotions shape sustainable consumer choice has not been examined. This study examines the role of recalled pride and guilt in shaping sustainable purchase intentions and the mediating role of anticipated pride and guilt. A conceptual model is proposed for motivating sustainable purchase intentions through the emotions associated with the behavioral recall. The model is applied in two experiments with online consumers examining purchase intentions of low carbon cars. Recalling feelings of pride associated with a past sustainability‐related behavior increases sustainable purchase intention, as compared with a neutral recall. This effect occurs through the mediation of both anticipated pride at the prospect of a sustainable behavior choice and anticipated guilt if the future choice is not sustainable. Similar hypotheses relating to recalled guilt at past unsustainable behavior were not supported. The study contributes to research on sustainable consumption, revealing an emotional route by which past behavior can influence future behavior. It also adds to emotional appraisal research by showing the role of specific self‐conscious emotions in forming this route, as prior research has focused more broadly on emotional valence.     

Predicting consumer behavior with two emotion appraisal dimensions: Emotion valence and agency in gift giving

Decades of emotion research have demonstrated the unique influences of many specific emotions on consumer behaviors. These countless numbers of emotion effects can make it difficult to understand the role of emotions in consumer behavior. The current research introduces a parsimonious framework that can predict the effects of emotions on the consumer behavior of gift giving with just two appraisal dimensions: valence and agency. A series of studies examining gift giving reveals that positive emotions exert positive effects on gift giving, independent of their agency. In contrast, agency does predict the effects of negative emotions on gift giving. Negative self-caused emotions increase gift giving, whereas negative other-caused emotions decrease gift giving. These findings seem to hold for inactive and active emotions, and for uncertain and certain emotions. Together, these findings make a unique theoretical and empirical contribution to the understanding of emotions in gift giving. Moreover, it provides a pragmatic framework for both academics and practitioners.     

Consumer responses to price discrimination: Discriminating bases, inequality status, and information disclosure timing influences

This study broadly explores consumers' perceived unfairness, negative emotions, internal reference price, and store choice under five common methods of price discrimination using two experimental studies. Study 1 investigates the interaction between discriminating bases and inequality status. Results reveal that discriminating bases only influence perceived unfairness for advantaged consumers, but affect all four responses for disadvantaged consumers. For disadvantaged consumers, direct discrimination that complies with social norms evokes the weakest unfavorable responses, whereas direct discrimination against social norms triggers the highest perception of unfairness and negative emotions but has similar effects on internal reference price and store choice to indirect discrimination. Study 2 examines the effect of information disclosure timing by comparing pre- and post-purchase disclosure policies. Results show that post-purchase disclosure of discrimination information elicits higher negative emotions for indirect discrimination involving coupon and purchase quantity, but is rather inconsequential for direct discrimination or indirect discrimination through membership.     

Negative Affect and Counterproductive Workplace Behavior: The Moderating Role of Moral Disengagement and Gender

There has been growing scholarly interest in understanding individual-level antecedents of counterproductive workplace behavior (CWB). While researchers have found a positive relationship between individuals’ negative affect and engagement in CWB, to date, our understanding of the factors which may affect this relationship is limited. In this study, we investigate the moderating roles of moral disengagement and gender in this relationship. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that individuals with a greater tendency to experience negative emotions were more likely to engage in CWB when they had a higher propensity to morally disengage. Moreover, we found that this interacting relationship varied across men and women. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and offer avenues for future research.     

Fairness,Feelings, and Ethical Decision- Making: Consequences of Violating Community Standards of Fairness

In this article, we describe the influence of violations of community standards of fairness (Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler, 1986a) on subsequent ethical decision-making and emotions. Across two studies, we manipulated explanations for a common action, and we find that explanations that violate community standards of fairness (e.g., by taking advantage of an in crease in market power) lead to greater intentions to behave unethically than explanations that are consistent with community standards of fairness (e.g., by passing along a price increase). We find that perceptions of justifiability mediate this relationship. We also find that individuals derive significant psychological benefits (greater satisfaction, greater happiness, and reduced anger) from engaging in unethical behavior following perceived violations of fairness. Maurice Schweitzer is an Associate Professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the negotiation process, and he is interested in deception, trust, and emotions. His work has appeared in several journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Donald E. Gibson is an Associate Professor at the Dolan School of Business, Fairfield University. His research focuses on emotions in the workplace, specifically anger. He also does research on organizational role models and social comparison processes. His work has appeared in journals including Organization Science, Journal of Management, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, and Journal of Vocational Behavior.     

The Effect of Workplace Negative Gossip on Employee Proactive Behavior in China: The Moderating Role of Traditionality

In this study, we examined the relationship between workplace negative gossip, as perceived by the targets, and proactive behavior by focusing on the mediating role of the target’s emotional exhaustion and the moderating role of the target’s traditionality. Our results from dyadic data on 234 supervisor–subordinate relationships in China revealed that (1) workplace negative gossip was negatively related to proactive behavior; (2) emotional exhaustion mediated this relationship; and (3) traditionality strengthened both the relationship between workplace negative gossip and emotional exhaustion and the indirect effect of workplace negative gossip on proactive behavior via emotional exhaustion. Our findings have a number of theoretical and practical implications for the research on mistreatment and proactive behavior.     

Moral Emotions and Ethics in Organisations: Introduction to the Special Issue

The aim of our special issue is to deepen our understanding of the role moral emotions play in organisations as part of a wider discourse on organisational ethics and morality. Unethical workplace behaviours can have far-reaching consequences—job losses, risks to life and health, psychological damage to individuals and groups, social injustice and exploitation and even environmental devastation. Consequently, determining how and why ethical transgressions occur with surprising regularity, despite the inhibiting influence of moral emotions, has considerable theoretical and practical significance to management scholars and managers alike. In this introduction, we present some of the core arguments in the field; notably, the effect of organisational life and bureaucracy on emotions, in general, and moral emotions, in particular; the moral standing of leaders, managers and followers; moral challenges raised by obedience and resistance to organisational power and ethical blindspots induced by what may appear as deeply moral emotions. These issues are explored by a collection of geographically diverse articles in various work contexts, which are thematically organised in terms of (i) moral emotions, ethical behaviour and social pressure, (ii) moral emotions and their consequences within/across levels of analysis, (iii) psychoanalytic perspectives on the management of moral emotions, (iv) virtue and moral emotions and (v) moral emotions and action tendencies. We end by suggesting certain avenues for future research in the hope that the endeavour initiated here will inspire improved practice at work.     

Consumer advocacy: Examining the feeling and doing following a failed service encounter

Dissatisfactory service experiences and consumer complaints following such experiences are everyday occurrences. Prior research has not only examined the emotions experienced because of failed service encounters but also has explored the resultant behaviours towards the service provider and the service. However, prior research does not distinguish between negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) motivated by marketplace-helping behaviour such as consumer advocacy and NWOM as venting triggered by emotions such as anger and frustration. The current study examines the direct relationship between regret and disappointment and consumer advocacy. Unlike past studies, the current study explores two types of customer dissatisfaction: agent based and outcome based. Study 1 uses a vignette methodology, and Study 2 uses experience sampling in which respondents provide personal episodes of failed service encounters. In contrast with a previous proposition, we find that regret has a significant negative relationship with consumer advocacy. Disappointment based on external events demonstrates a significant positive relationship, whereas disappointment caused by another person has a weaker relationship with consumer advocacy.     

The Calm before the Storm: Examining Emotion Regulation Consumption in the Face of an Impending Disaster

In the midst of the physical damage and collective stress created by natural disasters, individuals come to terms with their utter lack of control. In the process, a myriad of emotions are experienced, with many of them being negative in nature. Research suggests that during moderately challenging situations individuals experiencing negative emotions may engage in coping attempts to improve their emotional state. Consumption has been one strategy used by individuals to mitigate negative emotions. This research extends previous research by exploring whether such emotion regulation processes occur in extreme conditions such as natural disasters. Specifically, it examines the emotions experienced by individuals, the antecedents of these emotions, as well as how individuals regulate their emotions through consumption. A conceptual model is proposed and tested in Study 1 and findings are once again corroborated in a follow‐up study. Implications for mitigating negative emotions and improving subjective well‐being during extreme crisis situations are discussed.     

An Examination of Emotional Information Management in Gift Giving and Receipt

Gift giving is prominent in marketplace exchanges and has robust emotional implications for both the giver and recipient. For example, prior to and during the selection of a gift, the giver endures positive and negative emotions, as he/she grapples with selecting the perfect gift, and ponders if the recipient will actually cherish the purchased item. During this dynamic exchange process, emotional recognition, management of emotions, emotional empathy, and anticipated elation are oft experienced by both the giver and recipient. However, research examining such emotions quantitatively in a gifting context is scant and models of these faculties in the gift‐giving milieu are nonexistent. To help fill this research fissure, four studies are developed; they, in general, investigate determinants of feelings linked with the gestation, prestation, and reformulation stages of the gift‐giving event. Specifically, Study 1 (giver's perspective) and Study 2 (receiver's perspective) reveal a mediation void in the models tested. Heeding these results, Study 3 (gift given) and Study 4 (gift received) introduce anticipated elation as a key factor between the aforementioned emotive factors and the emotional responses inherent in the gift‐giving stages, among others. Managerial implications and future research directions are offered.     

Influencer marketing: When and why gen Z consumers avoid influencers and endorsed brands

Consumer avoidance of brands and influencers is a widespread phenomenon, especially among Generation Z (Gen Z); however, influencer marketing literature lacks clarity about when and why Gen Z engages in such avoidance. Our experimental investigation, across four studies, reveals that Gen Z considers brands' control over influencers to be morally irresponsible and, thus, avoids both. We introduce a novel construct, influencer avoidance, and examine its drivers. Study 1 indicates that perceived brand control engenders avoidance; moderation evidence shows that macro (vs. micro) influencers accentuate (attenuate) the influence of brand control on avoidance. Study 2 shows that Gen Z enjoying a strong versus weak relationship with influencers results in lower (higher) avoidance towards influencers and endorsed brands. Study 3 demonstrates that negative moral emotions mediate the relationship between perceived brand control and avoidance behavior. Study 4 generalizes the findings by analyzing a different influencer and endorsed brand and including a prominent advertisement disclosure. By investigating the drivers and mechanisms of Gen Z's avoidance behavior, our research contributes to research on the theory of moral responsibility, Gen Z's influencer avoidance behavior, and anti-consumption literature. This offers key insights into how to prevent acts of consumer retribution towards influencers and brands.