Opinions and attitudes can last when they are based on emotion
Association for Psychological Science
Depending on the topic, people's attitudes can change from moment to moment or last a lifetime. The factors that make one opinion long-lasting and another ephemeral, however, are not always clear.
Past studies have demonstrated that opinions based on hard facts and data can remain constant over time, but new research published in the journal Psychological Science reveals that attitudes based on feelings and emotions can also stand the test of time.
This research has implications for both predicting whose attitudes are fixed
versus fleeting and how to nudge people to form more long-lasting opinions.
"We have known that encouraging people to think carefully and rationally can produce attitudes that change less in the future," said Matthew Rocklage, a researcher with the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and co-lead author on the paper. "Our research, however, shows that opinions based on people's emotional reactions can be particularly long-lasting as well."
As part of their study, the
researchers asked more than 1,000 people to what extent they believed attitudes
based on feelings or emotional reactions were more stable over time than those
based on thinking and rational analysis. Only 15% expressed any belief that
attitudes based on emotion would be more stable over time.
To test the role that emotion plays
in forming long-lasting attitudes, the researchers conducted seven independent
studies involving more than 20,000 participants in a variety of real-world
situations.
The first survey, which was
conducted the day after Christmas, measured feelings about recently received
gifts. The timing of this survey allowed the researchers to measure real-world
reactions to a relatively newly formed attitude.
The participants were given a list
of adjectives to describe their attitudes toward their gifts. Adjectives like
"worthwhile" were associated with a practical reaction to the gift,
whereas words like "delightful" were more strongly associated with an
emotional reaction.
One month later, the participants
completed a follow-up survey to test the endurance of their opinions. The
results showed that the stronger the initial positive emotional reaction, the
more likely that opinion remained fixed one month later.
The researchers conducted similar
tests using virtually the same procedure but involving other scenarios, such as
how much the participants supported consumer brands over time and how favorable
their online restaurant reviews were between visits.
In the final test, participants read
one of two messages about a fictitious aquatic animal. One message contained
encyclopedic facts about the animal (low-emotion condition). The other message
was about a swimmer's underwater interaction with the animal (high-emotion
condition). The participants in the high-emotion condition showed significantly
less change in their attitude across time.
"Emotionality is an
unappreciated predictor of long-lasting attitudes," said Andrew Luttrell,
a researcher at Ball State University and the other lead author on the paper.
"These findings are important for understanding why some opinions are so
difficult to change as well as how to create opinions that stick."