Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Hot-Cold Empathy Gap And Persuasion: Does Fatigue Boost Or Reduce The Argument Quality Effect?, Alison I. Young

Scholar Week 2016 - present

Research on the hot-cold empathy gap (Nordgren et al., 2007) suggests that participants currently experiencing some visceral state (e.g., fatigue) empathize more with others in that same state and evaluate them more positively when their behavior is impacted by it (e.g., a tired mother yelling at a cashier). Research on persuasion suggests that the quality of a persuasive message (strong vs. weak) has more of an impact among people for whom that message is more relevant (Ajzen, Brown & Rosenthal, 1996), but less of an impact among those who are distracted (Petty, Wells & Brock, 1976). In this study, I …