Robin Nabi is a professor of communication at the University of California-Santa Barbara. She studies how emotional appeals can (and cannot) lead people to change their thoughts and behaviors. She’s published important research on the effects of anger, humor, and guilt, and she’s also developed integrated theories about how emotions can work together in the persuasion process. We talk about all this and more!

When we talk about humor and persuasion, we briefly mention Dannagal Young’s prior appearance on the show. To listen to that check out: Episode 19: Political Humor as Persuasion with Danna Young

Some things that come up in our conversation:

Sarah McLaclan’s powers of emotional manipulation (ASPCA)
Aristotle’s treatise on Rhetoric, including ethos (Miyawaki, 2017), logos (Trebing, 2017), and pathos (Tollefson, 2017).
Robin has a nice summary of work in this area in a chapter for The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects (Nabi, 2017)
Emotion is not as irrational as we may believe (e.g., Clore, 2011; Mull, 2019)
Emotions can help frame an issue (Nabi, 2003)
“Emotional flow” or the sequence of emotions in a message (Nabi, 2015)

Some sound effects sourced from freesfx.co.uk

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/moral-conviction-with-linda-skitka/

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