Role of Familiarity in Mediating the Impact of Positive Affect on Persuasive Processing

与那些情绪不好的人相比，情绪积极的人在处理信息时不那么挑剔，也不那么深入。正因如此，快乐的人有时更容易被无力和似是而非的论点说服。虽然这一发现本身已经得到了很好的证实，但对它的解释却没有。另一个公认的发现是，将物体、事件或情况识别为熟悉的会引发积极的情绪和非分析性思维。积极的感觉是一种熟悉的暗示。把这两组研究结果放在一起，我们认为积极情绪触发非分析性思维，因为快乐通常意味着熟悉，而当事情熟悉时，它可以被表面地处理。本研究的主要目的是实证地确定积极情绪触发非分析性思维，因为积极情绪通常意味着熟悉，这反过来又触发非分析性思维。在这种观点下，人们常常把由各种小环境事件（如收到赞美、收到意外的小礼物、看一部有趣的电影）引发的温和的积极情绪误认为是伴随着熟悉感的认可而产生的积极情绪。这些实验旨在表明：（a）这种混淆可能发生;（B）这种混淆发生和不发生的条件;（c）这种混淆是感觉良好和非分析性加工之间典型联系的原因。鉴于积极的情绪很容易被触发，（就像人们在听总统讲话之前看电视喜剧一样）或相当刻意地（当广告代理商调用幽默的上下文来展示一个几乎没有价值属性的产品时），这项研究对于理解人们何时以及如何更容易受到伤害，或更抗拒，说服力

People who are in positive moods deal with information less critically and in less depth than do those who are not in a positive mood. For this reason, happy people can sometimes be more easily persuaded by weak and specious arguments. Although the finding itself is well established, the explanation for it is not. Another well-established finding is that the recognition of an object, event, or situation as familiar triggers both a positive mood and non-analytic thinking. Feeling positive is a cue to familiarity. Putting these two sets of findings together, it is suggested that positive mood triggers non-analytic thinking because being happy usually signals familiarity, and when something is familiar, it can be dealt with superficially.The primary objective of this research is to empirically establish that positive mood triggers non-analytic thinking because positive mood usually signals familiarity, which in turn triggers non-analytic thinking. In this view, people often mistake a mild positive mood induced by all kinds of small environmental events (such as receiving a compliment, being given a small unexpected gift, watching a funny movie) for the positive mood that accompanies the recognition of familiarity. These experiments are designed to show a) that this confusion can take place, b) the conditions under which it does and does not take place, and c) that this confusion is responsible for the typically found association between feeling good and non-analytic processing. Given that positive moods can be triggered quite easily either incidentally (as when people watch a television comedy before listening to a Presidential address) or quite deliberately (as when an advertising agency invokes a humorous context in which to present a product with few valuable attributes), this research has both theoretical and practical implications for understanding when and how people can be more vulnerable, or more resistant to, persuasion.