Introduction
Human perception of naturalistic expressions of emotions is difficult to estimate. This difficulty is in part due to the presence of complex emotions, defined as emotions that contain shades of multiple affective classes. The plethora of emotion literature addresses a range of perspectives and approaches to emotions. A social-constructionist approach implies that emotions are enacted; that is, through their actions, individuals actively take part in the construction of emotions related to their interpretations of the environment. Emotions include cognitive processes as an element in emotions and as such both when emotions are unintentional and when we control or manage them, we are influenced consciously or unconsciously by societal norms, values, traditions, and morality. The social interaction process is an evolving action, fluid and constantly changing, where relationships are relative rather than being fixed. It creates opportunities for those with the ability to form and exploit relationships. Hence, it is significant to understand and appreciate the processes, the discourse of emotions, and the management of emotions. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to discuss various structures and perspective of emotions to better understand as to how emotions arise, evolve, morph, interact, and influence consumer learning and engagement. Despite the debates regarding the boundary conditions of emotion, however, there is considerable agreement that emotional responses are relatively brief, phasic events that can be decomposed into experiential, expressive, and physiological components. According to a functional view of emotion, each specific emotional state is thought to reflect the coordination of these response components to best effect an adaptive response to an environmental challenge. In this respect, emotions can be considered as states of readiness, or action dispositions, which are organized along two opposing overarching approach and avoidance motivational systems. Engagement of these neurobehavioral motivational systems is assumed to prime a body of motivation-relevant associations and representations and a repertoire of motivation-related behaviors. More specifically, the engagement of these approach or avoidance motivational systems is thought to facilitate goal-directed behavior toward something desirable or away from something noxious, respectively. Although contextual factors may further shape the overt manifestations of emotion, these motivational systems may be considered as neurally rooted circuits that fundamentally drive emotional behavior. It should be noted that although emotions are widely considered to be a relatively brief phenomena, there is important variability in the time course, or chronometry, of emotional responses, and this variability is becoming the focus of increasing empirical and theoretical attention. That is, emotional responses are not wholly temporally constrained by the presence of an eliciting stimulus, but instead vary in their peak and duration in ways that may hold important information about individual differences.
Structure of Emotions
Marketing scholars have started to study emotions evoked by marketing stimuli, products, and brands. Many studies involving consumer emotions have focused on consumers’ emotional responses to advertising and the mediating role of emotions on the satisfaction of consumers. Because what people really want out of life, out of their jobs, out of the products they buy, or the airplanes they fly in simply can’t be articulated. If you ask people what they want, they just tell you what they read in a book or magazine, and, honestly, they cannot really express their deep feelings. Therefore, you know what Boeing did to address this, more specifically, Boeing discovered not only how people view flight, but also what sorts of features in an airliner’s interior might have universal appeal. They used space, lighting, and other build in details that would create a pleasant consumer experience in the form of the Boeing Dream liner. So now when you board, you will enter a spacious foyer where two arches curve up into a ceiling that seems to disappear into a bright morning sky. The arches draw your eyes upward. The ceiling, washed with light from hidden light-emitting diodes, almost glows, in stark contrast to the glare of fluorescent tubes that usually provide light in conventional airliner cabins. During the flight, flight attendants can change the brightness and color of the cabin light to create a sense of morning, dusk, and night time. Emotions have been shown to play an important role in other contexts such as complaining about service failures and product attitudes. Emotions are often conceptualized as general dimensions, like positive and negative affect, but there has also been an interest in more specific emotions. There are clear differences in the extent to which people express their emotions. Emotionally expressive individuals have higher levels of self-esteem, well-being, life satisfaction, social closeness, and lower levels of social anhedonia. However, with regard to structure, some researchers examine all emotions at the same level of generality, whereas others specify a hierarchical structure in which specific emotions are particular instances of more general underlying basic emotions. Second, and relatedly, there is debate concerning the content of emotions. Should emotions be most fruitfully conceived as very broad general factors, such as pleasure or arousal or positive or negative affect. Alternatively, appraisal theorists argue that specific emotions should not be combined in broad emotional factors, because each emotion has a distinct set of appraisals. The confusion concerning structure and content of emotions has hindered the full interpretation and use of emotions in consumer behavior. There is wide divergence in the content of emotion, but the classification of emotions in positive and negative affect appears to be the most popular conceptualization. The two traditional theories of emotions are discrete and dimensional emotion theory. According to discrete theories, there exist a small number, between 9 and 14, of basic or fundamental emotions that are characterized by very specific response patterns in physiology as well as in facial and vocal expression. In the tradition of the discrete description of emotions, there is an existence of a set of six fundamental emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, anger, neutral, and surprise that are often used in research with this theory. The discrete description of the emotions is the most direct way than other definitions to discuss emotional clues conveyed by consumers. Using such a discrete emotion approach is more likely to distinguish an emotion from the given kinds than to recognize emotions in the whole emotional space. In the dimensional theories of emotion, emotional states are often mapped in a two- or three-dimensional space. The two major dimensions consist of the valence dimension (pleasant–unpleasant, agreeable–disagreeable) and an activity dimension (active–passive). If a third dimension is used, it often represents either power or control. Usually, several discrete emotion terms are mapped into the dimensional space according to their relationships to the dimensions. For example, some of the dimensional opinions of the emotions characterize the emotional states in arousal and appraisal components. Intense emotions are accompanied by increased levels of physiological arousal.
Impact of Cultural Structure on Emotions
Feelings signal to us in a manner culture influences what we feel and how we name it. More specifically, there is an impact of cultural structure on emotions and on the vocabularies that people use to verbalize emotional states. For example, to name a feeling is to identify your way of seeing something, label your perception since culture directs your seeing and expect that it directs your feeling, and your naming of the feeling. In addition to cultural structure, a society’s social structure may also influence our emotions and our cognitive labels for them. Power and status may be treated as universal social or relational dimensions underlying the production of human emotion,1 that is, at a macro level. The vocabulary of emotions in any society may reflect its power, status and relationships as embodied, for example, in its system of social stratification. If emotion structure is employed to refer to the number and nature of dimensions required to span the emotions domain, as well as to the general configuration of points therein, emotion content encompasses a society’s vocabulary of emotions, including the average level of intensity and affective range invoked by these cognitive labels. To the extent that human emotion has a universal component called a biological substratum; we would expect it to be reflected in a similarity of emotion structure across cultures. To the extent that there is a cultural component, we would expect it to be manifested in variations of emotion content across cultures, interacting with the biological to produce some variation in the emotion structure itself.
Both biosocial and cognitive-social theories of emotions acknowledge that an emotion is a complex phenomenon. They generally agree that an emotion includes physiological functions, expressive behavior, and subjective experience and that each of these components is based on activity in the brain and nervous system. Some theorists, particularly of the cognitive-social persuasion, hold that an emotion also involves cognition, an appraisal, or cognitive evaluative process that triggers the emotion and determines, or contributes to, the subjective experience of the emotion. It is important to remember that the components of an emotion stem from highly interdependent processes. The subjective experience of an emotion, as well as the physiological and expressive components, are manifestations of processes occurring in the brain, nervous system, and body.
The Physiological Component
The physiological component of the emotion traditionally has been identified as activity in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the visceral organs (e.g., heart, lungs), which it innervates. However, some current theorists’ hold that the neural basis of emotions resides in the central nervous system (CNS) and that the ANS is recruited by emotion to fulfill certain functions related to sustaining and regulating emotion experience and emotion related behavior.2
Similarly, neuroanatomical studies have shown that the CNS structures involved in emotion activation have afferent pathways to the ANS. For example, efferents from the amygdala to the hypothalamus may influence the ANS activity involved in defensive reactions.3 Thus the emotions of joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear could be differentiated by their patterns of heart rate and skin temperature.
Differential Roles of the Brain Hemispheres
Do we know that the two brain hemispheres are involved differently in different emotions?
Interestingly, the right (or dominant) hemisphere may be more involved in mediating emotion than the left.4 The right hemisphere is more involved than the left in processing emotion information and mediating emotion experiences. The right hemisphere may be more involved in processing negative emotions and the left hemisphere more involved in processing positive emotions.5
The Expressive Component
The expressive component of emotion includes facial, vocal, postural, and gestural activity. Research indicates that facial expression is the most essential and stable aspect of emotion expression in human beings. Expressive behavior is mediated by phylogenetically old structures of the brain, suggesting that they may have served survival functions in the course of evolution.
Furthermore, there is a considerable body of evidence on the neural control of animals’ emotional behavior, behavior that often has both signal value and instrumental functions. For example, the porcupine’s erect bristles tell us the porcupine is threatened, and at the same time they discourage predators from attacking it. Emotion expressions involve limbic and forebrain structures and aspects of the peripheral nervous system. The facial and trigeminal nerves and receptors in facial muscles and skin are required for emotion expressions and sensory feedback. Early studies of the neural basis of emotion expression showed that aggressive behavior can be elicited and suggested that the hypothalamus is a critical subcortical structure mediating aggression.6 Thus, medial areas of the hypothalamus elicit affective attack or defensive behavior, whereas stimulation of lateral sites in the hypothalamus elicits predatory attack. However, the central gray region of the midbrain and the substantia nigra may be the key structures mediating aggressive behavior in animals.
Neural Pathways of Facial Expression
The patterns of facial movements constitute the chief means of displaying emotion-specific signals. We have already noted that the facial expressions of seven basic emotions are innate and universal. Whereas, research has provided much information on the neural basis of emotional behaviors (e.g., aggression) in animals, little is known about the brain structures that control facial expressions. The peripheral pathways of emotion expression consist of the cranial nerves VII and V. Nerve VII or the facial nerve is the efferent pathway; it conveys motor messages from the brain to the facial muscles. Nerve V or the trigeminal nerve is the afferent pathway that provides sensory data from movements of facial muscles and skin. The trigeminal nerve transmits the facial feedback that, according to some theorists, contributes to the activation and regulation of emotion experience. The impulses for this sensory feedback originate when movement stimulates the proprioceptors in the muscle spindles and the mechanoreceptors in the skin.
The facial skin is richly supplied with such receptors, and the many branches of the trigeminal nerve appear quite adequate to the task of detecting and conveying the sensory impulses to the brain. The trigeminal nerve divides into three main branches, one for each major region of the face. Each of these regions contains muscle groups that make the appearance changes that constitute the emotion-specific components of the facial expressions of the emotions.
Studies have shown that people in literate and preliterate cultures have a common understanding of the expressions of joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, and fear. Other studies have suggested that interest and shyness may also be innate and universal. There is uncertainty about the universality of the expressions of interest and shyness, and no basis for believing there are universal expressions for shame and guilt, but a number of scientists believe that these four emotions are also biologically based and universal. Studies have shown that people in literate and preliterate cultures have a common understanding of the expressions of joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, and fear.
The Experiential Component
There is general agreement that stimulus events and neural processes leading to an emotion result not only in physiological activities and expressive behavior, but also in subjective experience. Some biosocial theorists restrict the definition of an emotion experience to a feeling state and argue that it can obtain and function independently of cognition.7 Experiences that involve feeling and cognition are viewed as affective-cognitive structures. Cognitive-social theorists view the experiential component of emotion as having a cognitive aspect. For example, consumers perceive or detect the underlying physiological changes before they can experience the feeling states; upon detection, the perceived change in the feeling state is motivational and it invites a cognitive judgment or interpretation of its cause. Emotion experiences occur as the result of the cognitive interpretations and evaluations of physiological states and expressions.8
However, consumers have a concept of self before emotion can be evoked and experienced. In my view, when consumers look at brands, they develop a fairly complex cognitive structure even before they can feel or experience emotion, and then they proceed to purchase the same. The issue regarding the possibility of independence of emotion feeling states and cognition remains unresolved, but it is widely agreed that emotion-feeling states and cognitive processes are frequently, if not typically, highly interactive. The experiential component of emotion is the easiest and at the same time the most difficult to explain. It is easy in that it is the aspect of emotion that acquires consciousness. It is what we feel in contentment and involvement and during the challenges and frustrations of daily life. Emotion experience is difficult to define and explain because it is ultimately a private matter. Attempts to communicate about emotion experiences are thwarted by the seeming inadequacy of language to describe precisely how we feel. There are a few instances where feelings and words are perfectly matched, where a word gives a complete sense of the feeling we are experiencing.
The Functions of Emotions
Do Emotions Influence Perception, Cognition, Social Relations, and Actions?
The Functions of the Physiological Component
The ANS-mediated physiological activity that accompanies emotion states can be considered as part of the individual’s effort to adapt and cope. Higher heart rate and increased respiration can facilitate the motor activities required for aggressive or defensive action in anger or fear-eliciting situations. Heart-rate deceleration at the onset of interest may reflect physiological quieting that facilitates information processing. It is easy to understand the adaptiveness of anger- or fear-related change in the cardiovascular system where the situation calls for defense of life and limb or escape from imminent danger. It is not so easy to understand it in a situation such as a confrontation with an irate spouse, client, or sales executive or supervisor. In the latter type of situation, adaptiveness appears to follow from effective regulation of emotion experience and expression, which in turn helps regulate physiological processes. That, the physiological processes associated with emotion require regulation does not mean that they are not inherently adaptive. Among other things, the ANS activity and the activity of hormones and other neurotransmitters are probably essential to maintaining emotion-driven cognition and action over time. Furthermore, changes in patterns of ANS activity, in accordance with changes in specific emotions, may be essential to adaptive functioning. Adaptation to events and situations that elicit interest require quite a different behavioral strategy than do situations that elicit fear. The heart-rate deceleration and quieting of internal organs in interest should maximize intake and cognitive processing of information, whereas heart-rate acceleration in fear prepares us to cope by more active means, whether through cognitive processes, gross motor actions, verbalizations, or various combinations of these behaviors.
The Functions of Emotion Expressions
Emotion expressions have three major functions: (a) they contribute to the activation and regulation of emotion experiences; (b) they communicate something about our internal states and intentions to others; and (c) they activate emotions in others, a process that can help account for empathy and altruistic behavior. Emotion expressions contribute to the activation and regulation demotion experiences. Even voluntary emotion expression evokes emotion feeling.9 Even the simulation (expression) of an emotion tends to arouse it in our minds; that is, sensations created by the movements of expressive behavior activate, or contribute to the activation of, the emotion feeling.
There is some scientific support for the old advice to “smile when you feel blue” and “whistle a happy tune when you’re afraid.” What functions do emotions serve? One school of thought says that emotions serve no useful functions, and, in fact, disrupt ongoing activity, disorganize behavior, and generally lack the logic, rationality, and principled orderliness of reason and other cognitive processes. The other school of thought conveys that those emotions serve clearly specified functions, such as prioritizing and organizing ongoing behaviors in ways that optimize the individual’s adjustment to the demands of the physical and social environment. Despite widespread references to the functions of emotions, however, there are few explicit discussions of what a functional approach to emotion entails. To define this sense of function, it is helpful to begin with what functions are not. Functions are not solely identified as to what something is used for or what it is good for, because behavior, traits, or systems have many uses and are good for many things that are not synonymous with their functions (e.g., the sound of the heart beating can be used to diagnose physical conditions, knives can be used to paint). Nor are functions underlying mechanisms,10 which refer to processes, typically physiological or cognitive, that produce behavior with certain functions. Nor are functions goals, which refer to properties of action.11 Rather, functions are a certain sort of consequence of goal-directed action. Functions are identified in etiological explanations of the origins and development of the behavior, trait, or system. Functional ascriptions, therefore, refer to the history of behavior, trait, or system, as well as its regular consequences that benefit the organism, or more specifically, the system in which the trait, behavior, or system is contained.12 Thus, one perspective is that emotions do not serve adaptive functions, and, in fact, are pernicious to human adjustment. This view dates back to the classical philosophers and motivates the prevalent metaphor that reason should be the master of the unruly and untrustworthy passions.13 A second perspective holds that emotions once served functions in the environment of human evolution, but no longer do so in their present form in the present environment. A third perspective holds that emotions serve functions now as they have previously. Emotions are adaptations to problems in the current human environment. Inferences about functions of emotions, therefore, can be based upon the analyses of specific causes and consequences of emotion within the current environment. Thus, emotions are adaptations to the problems of social and physical survival.
In other words, emotions are systems of interrelated components offering solutions to specific problems of survival or adjustment. Finally, beneficial consequences are also expressed in terms of functions of emotions, but the challenge is to know and to establish as to whether emotions are best conceptualized in general or specific terms, in dimensional or discrete terms, or as biologically based or socially constructed entities. Evolutionary theorists explain functions of emotions by identifying their origins in functionally equivalent responses of other species and in characterizing how biologically based, genetically encoded emotions met selection pressures, or threats to survival, specific to the physical and social environment of human evolution. Whereas, social constructionists focus on how emotion is constructed according to social, structural, and moral-ideological forces that represent culture and the historical social context. Both perspectives identify the causal forces that account for how emotions originate, develop, and operate within the current social and physical environment; they differ on the components of emotion, causal forces, and evolutionary or constructive processes that are of interest. Functional accounts treat emotions, behaviors, or organs as systems of coordinated responses. For example, the components of the cardiovascular system, including the heart, vasculature, and baroreceptors, serve interrelated functions that allow for the distribution of blood to support different kinds of action. Functional accounts of emotions, likewise, treat emotions as complex systems of coordinated yet separate subsystems that meet the myriad and dynamic demands posed by the problems of physical and social survival. The conceptual implications of a systems approach to emotion are several. First, the subsystems of emotions are likely to serve different functions, a notion supported by the weak correlations usually observed among the measures of the different emotion response systems. Thus, nonverbal and vocal emotional behavior serves communicative functions. The autonomic responses of emotion supports the execution of flexible yet specific action tendencies, perception and experience reprioritize, structure, and provide input into information processing and judgment and decision making. The coordination of all afferent and efferent activity of emotions is done by CNS. In systems approach, emotions are treated as dynamic processes that emerge in the interaction between the activity of emotion response systems and changes in the physical and social environment. It also involves feedback processes in which information about changes in the environment modifies the different response systems of emotion, and, similarly, it involves control processes that co-ordinate the different subsystems of emotion in response to a changing environment. Furthermore, functions of behaviors or traits are often equated with their systematic, beneficial consequences, both in terms of distal benefits relating to enhanced survival rates of the individual, offspring, and related kin, and proximal benefits relating to improved conditions of the physical and social environment. Functional accounts address the antecedents of emotion, but, additionally, specify the systematic consequences of emotion within a given context, which in part account for the evolution or construction of the emotion. For example, appeasement is believed to be one of the consequences and function of embarrassment and shame and redressing injustice is believed to be one of the consequences and function of anger, not all consequences of emotions relate to their functions. Function-related consequences are those reliable effects on the environment that the structure of an emotion, that is, its pattern of experience, communication, physiology, and action, was specifically designed to bring about, either through the process of evolution, according to evolutionary theorists, or socialization and cultural elaboration according to social constructionists. Accidental consequences of emotion, in contrast, are less clearly related to the conditions that elicit the emotion, the structure, and goals of emotion-related responses, and are typically less regular for distinctions between accidents and functions. For example, anger might plausibly have several consequences, including increased phone bills, parking tickets, eating binges, and irrational bouts of house-cleaning, which do not relate to the assumed function of anger, the restoration of just relations. Emotion-related consequences may be distinguished from function-related consequences by their relative independence from the causes of emotion and emotion related responses, and their irregularity of co-occurrence both within the same individual over time and across different individuals.
Self-Conscious Emotions
All of emotional life takes place in a social environment. From the beginning of life, the early emotions such as joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and interest are affected by the social world.
The circumstances and situations that evoke these emotions and their expressions are affected by the rules and regulations of their parents, siblings, and peers. Thus, it is safe to conclude that even these early emotions are socialized. Even so, there is some reason to believe that these emotions themselves are not learned but have an evolutionary adaptive significance for the species. We move from these early emotions to self-conscious emotions; socialization plays an increasing role in determining what situation elicits what emotions, as well as how they are expressed. One might think of development of emotional life as requiring an ever increasing socialization influence.
To understand the ontogenesis of these emotions, it is necessary to consider the cognitive development, which likely gives rise to them. The emergence, both phylogenetically and ontogenically, of the mental representation of me or self-reflected awareness, provides the capacities most necessary for the emergence of these self-conscious emotions.14 It is the capacity to think about the self, that is self-reflection or awareness, along with other emerging cognitive capacities that provides the basis for these emotions beyond primary emotions like fear, anger, and joy. The set of the self-conscious emotions include embarrassment, jealousy, empathy as well as shame, guilt, hubris, and pride. These emotions require the cognitive ability to reflect on the self but do not require elaborate cognitive capacities such as the understanding of rules and standards, but the emergence of self-awareness gives rise to such emotions as embarrassment, empathy, and jealousy. Embarrassment is a complex emotion that first emerges when self-awareness allows for the idea of me. For example, when a consumer in a store becomes the object of another’s attention. The attention of others acts as an elicitor of embarrassment. Even compliments from the store personnel may result in some kind of embarrassment; even pointing to this consumer and saying his or her name can produce this effect. It is because of being the object of other’s attention due to a failure of some standard expected rules and regulation and behavioral outcome in the store. Empathy also emerges at this time since the consumer can now place himself or herself in the role of the other. The consumer may also reflect an appearance of jealousy if she or he is capable of knowing that another has what she or he wants to purchase from the store. Remember that these self-conscious emotions appear early during the age of 15 to 24 months. They are not the consequence of your knowledge of the standards, rules, and goals of the people around you; they are the direct consequence of your ability to consider themselves in your interactions with others. Self-conscious evaluative emotions also include guilt, shame, pride, and hubris. Embarrassment can occur both as a function of being the object of another’s attention in and of him or her, and also because of being the object of other’s attention due to a failure of some expected behavior in a particular situation. The emotion of guilt or regret is produced when individuals evaluate their behavior as failure, but focus on the specific features of the self, or on the self’s action which led to the failure. Similarly, shame is the product of a complex set of cognitive activities: the evaluation of an individual’s actions in regard to their socially and culturally accepted behavior, and their global evaluation of the self. The phenomenological experience of the person having shame is that of a wish to hide, disappear, or die. It is a highly negative and painful state which also results in the disruption of ongoing behavior, the confusion in thought and an inability to speak. There are specific actions people employ when shamed such as reinterpreting the causes of the shame, self-splitting (multiple personalities), or forgetting (repression). Shame is not produced by any specific situation but rather by the individual’s interpretation of the event. Here the individual focuses on the self’s actions and behaviors, which are likely to repair the failure, as the cognitive attributional process focuses on the action of the self rather than on the totality of self, the feeling that is produced—guilt—is not as intensely negative as shame and does not lead to confusion and to the loss of action, but is associated with it a corrective action which the individual can do to repair the failure. Because in guilt the focus is on a specific attribution, individuals are capable of ridding themselves of this emotional state through action. The corrective action can be directed toward the self as well as toward the other; thus, unlike shame which is a melding of the self as subject and object, in guilt the self is differentiated from the object. As such, the emotion is less intense and more capable of dissipation. Hubris is defined as exaggerated pride or self-confidence often resulting in retribution. It is an example of pridefulness, something dislikeable, and to be avoided. Hubris is a consequence of an evaluation of success at one’s standards, rules, and goals where the focus is on the global self. In this emotion, the individual focuses on the total self as successful. It is associated with such descriptions as puffed up. In extreme cases, it is associated with grandiosity or with narcissism. People observe the individual having hubris with some disdain. Prideful people have difficulty in their interpersonal relations since their own hubris is likely to interfere with the wishes, needs, and desires of others, in which case, there is likely to be interpersonal conflict. The three problems associated with a prideful person are (1) it is a transient but addictive emotion; (2) it is not related to a specific action and, therefore, requires altering patterns of goal-setting or evaluation around what constitutes success; and (3) it interferes with interpersonal relationships because of its contemptuous and insolent nature.
Pride is the consequence of a successful evaluation of a specific action. The phenomenological experience is “joy over an action, thought or feeling well done.” Here, again, the focus of pleasure is specific and related to a particular behavior. In pride, the self and object are separated as in guilt. Unlike shame and hubris, where subject and object are fused, pride focuses the organism on its action. The organism is engrossed in the specific action which gives it pride. Because this positive state is associated with a particular action, individuals have available to themselves the means by which they can reproduce the state. Notice that, unlike hubris, pride’s specific focus allows for action. Because of the general use of the term pride to refer to hubris, efficacy, and satisfaction, the study of pride as hubris has received relatively little attention. In sum, discussion of self-conscious emotions requires us to note that in order to understand them we must keep in mind that the biology of the species, and the cultural rules that surround the individual, along with the individual’s specific dispositional functions like temperament, are all necessary for the understanding of their purchase decision making. The self-conscious emotions are particularly important for helping individuals recognize and correct their social mistakes. For example, the experience of self-conscious emotions provides internal feedback about a specific goal, expectation, or standard that has been violated. The specific nature of the violation is specific to particular self-conscious emotions. Violations of social conventions may result in embarrassment, violations of character ideals are associated with shame, and violations of rules related to harm, justice, and rights are related to guilt. The display of self-conscious emotion also leads to emotions and behaviors in others that help remedy social transgressions. Also, negative self-conscious emotions are important to examine in the field of consumer behavior. These emotions have been identified as drivers of social behavior; each day consumers make decisions and form attitudes and thoughts based on the negative self-conscious emotions they experience. Thus, these emotions are a common occurrence in the marketplace, making them particularly relevant to examine in the consumption experience. Indeed, consumers make decisions to avoid experiencing these negative emotions. Some of these are discussed in the following sections.
Anger
Anger is an emotion that arises when someone else is blamed for a situation, and it motivates the person to do something to remove the source of harm. Anger appears to be quite common in consumption experiences. Customer anger is a negatively valenced emotion that occurs when another individual, object (e.g., product), or organization (e.g., retailer, service provider) is blamed for a problem. Angry customers are less satisfied, give lower service expectations, have higher perceptions of injustice, and give weaker ratings of corporate image. Angry customers are also less likely to spread positive word of mouth, and are more likely to complain and exhibit negative repurchase intentions.
Worry
Worry occurs when an individual engages in thoughts of a negative, uncontrollable event. Typically, the individual is trying to avoid the anticipated threat. Worry is often expressed as anxiety. Anxious feelings have been found in a variety of consumer behavior contexts. Consumers with high anxiety have a preference for sincere brands. In addition, anxiety triggers a preference for products that are safer and provide a sense of control. Anxiety has also been linked to gift giving; people are anxious when they are highly motivated to induce desired actions from recipients and others, and are doubtful of success. Finally, technology anxiety prevents people from using self-service Technologies.
Sadness
Sadness is an emotion characterized by feelings of loss and helplessness. In marketing, sadness has been studied to an extent, but not systematically. Most research on sadness examines a sad mood or overall sad affective states. When consumers are in a sad state, they eat larger amounts of hedonic foods than when they are in a happy state. Similarly, consumers in a sad mood are more prone to affective attitude formation than participants in a happy mood.
Fear
Fear is the common response to threat and uncertainty and has been used extensively in marketing, particularly in advertising appeals. Here moderate fear arousal increases intention, whereas low and high fears either do not change intentions (in the case of low fear) or can cause a boomerang effect (in the case of high fear). However, the individual characteristics can moderate the behavior; high fear may be effective if the recipients are involved, whereas low fear may be more effective for people who are less involved. Thus, mediating the role of fear helps in predicting behavioral intentions, and in the influence of individual differences.
Discontent
The specific emotion of discontent is similar to the lack of satisfaction, a term commonly used in marketing. Satisfaction is generally viewed as an outcome of consumption (product or service purchase or experience), whereby a comparison is made between expectations of performance and actual achievement. Satisfaction arises when actual performance or experience is greater than or equal to expectations, and dissatisfaction occurs otherwise. The determinants of satisfaction can include positive affect (interest and joy) and negative affect (anger, disgust, contempt, shame, guilt, fear, and sadness). Remember that satisfaction shares a much common variance with positive emotions such as happiness, joy, gladness, elation, delight, and enjoyment, among others. Thus, it seems discontent can be argued to be similar to an overall state of negative affect or dissatisfaction. In consumption experiences, lack of satisfaction has been linked to a negative word-of-mouth, lower patronage intentions, lower trust, and lower commitment. Similar is the case of envy, loneliness, and shame, where envy is characterized by a negative state, that is, when a person lacks another’s perceived superior quality, achievement, or possession. Envy has also been associated with upward social comparisons; comparing oneself to another who has something that the envier considers to be important to have. Loneliness is characterized by feelings of emptiness and solitude. In conclusion the self-conscious emotions are intimately intertwined in the relationship between a person and the self. Feelings of shame and guilt arise in the context of self-blame; embarrassment arises based on some action of the self. When people experience failure, they search for explanations and causes. If the search reveals that the self is to blame, one of these guilt, embarrassment, and shame emotions occurs.
Self-Evaluation Emotions
The understanding of emotions in social contexts is critical for coordinating adaptive social interactions and relationships. For example, people are required to verbally describe emotions to express and to share with other people; they also need to read others’ emotions accurately in everyday social interactions. All these activities may be accompanied by explicit and conscious emotional processing. For successful social interactions, we need to know how we feel about ourselves and to understand how other people feel about situations. We can then decide whether we hide or express our emotions to other people and are able to detect whether others are hiding or expressing their emotions. Emotional processing in everyday social situations occurs in conscious, deliberate manners in both self (evaluation of one’s own emotions) and others (evaluation of others’ emotions).
Self-Conscious Emotions and Evaluation
Embarrassment, social anxiety, pride, guilt, and shame constitute the self-conscious emotions, which share a focus on evaluation. Self-conscious emotions always involve a self-evaluative process through self-representations and self-awareness. The experience of other basic emotions can, at times, involve self-evaluation, but it is not required. Self-representation is a necessary antecedent for the experience of self-conscious emotions. However, people experience self-conscious emotions based on how they perceive they are being evaluated by others, not by how they are evaluating themselves. Nevertheless, both the views involve the underlying component of evaluation. The self-conscious emotions experienced by consumers, along with the implications of these emotions, would likely have an effect not only on the consumer’s purchase decisions, but also on their shopping enjoyment, persistence in purchase, and ability to cope with purchase related issues. For example, the Dove brand is rooted in listening to women. Based on the findings of a major global study, Dove launched the Campaign for Real Beauty in 2004; the campaign started a global conversation about the need for a wider definition of beauty. It employed various communications vehicles to challenge beauty stereotypes and invite women to join a discussion about beauty. The main message of the Dove campaign was that women’s unique differences should be celebrated, rather than ignored, and that physical appearance should be transformed from a source of anxiety to a source of confidence. The main issue being targeted was the repetitive use of unrealistic, unattainable images, which consequently pose restrictions on the definition of beauty. Dove sought to change the culture of advertising by challenging beauty stereotypes; they selected women whose appearances are outside the stereotypical norms of beauty (e.g., older women with wrinkles, overweight women). The real women were attractive and likeable to their female audience because they were relatable and provided a fresh perspective within the media. In relation to the Dove campaign, it could be assumed that these real women are perceived as overall similar, leading women to engage in these assimilative processes. This would result in women being more likely to report higher self-evaluations when the target has desirable traits and lower self-evaluations when the target has undesirable traits. Therefore, in assuming that these real women of the Dove campaign possess desirable traits, and that these assimilative processes have occurred, the advertisements would have a positive effect on women’s self-appraisals, and generally make women feel good about themselves. Beyond simply making people feel good about the company, what Dove has so successfully done is reframe the function of purchasing their beauty products and toiletries from one focused on utilitarian outcomes (such as the quality and price of the products—things that are virtually never mentioned in the ads) to one that is focused on expressing important values and connecting with others.
While shame and guilt are often used interchangeably in everyday language, they are distinct. Shame arises from a negative self-evaluation and can result from a feeling that we have not lived up to the standards or goals we have set for ourselves. There is failure in moral action or not meeting the moral, competence, or aesthetic expectations of society. With the goals, decisions, and expectations from multiple sources involved in consumers’ decision making, it is likely that consumers often have to deal with feelings of shame. Shame can be very painful, as the entire self, not just a particular aspect, is scrutinized and negatively evaluated. Shame is often regulated by attempting to make external attributions to deal with the painful emotion, such as blaming others for wrong purchase decisions. It is important to note that while shame is regulated using an external source, it is still the result of an internal, stable, and controllable attribution. While shame involves a negative evaluation of a central aspect of the self, guilt implies a negative evaluation of a specific behavior. Feelings of guilt involve the perception that someone has done something bad or wrong and as such individuals experiencing guilt often feel tension, remorse, and regret. However, the person experiencing guilt may feel bad for the moment, but his or her self-concept and identity remain relatively intact. Effort attributions for failure often result in guilt when one is experiencing guilt; the focus usually turns to reparative actions, such as confessing, apologizing, undoing, or repairing, which suggests that aspects of the self can be changed. However, guilt-prone individuals have also been shown to respond by making internal attributions, resulting in more guilt. Thus, the distinguishing feature of guilt and shame is the stability and controllability of the attribution. Internal, uncontrollable, and presumably stable attributions for failure are associated with shame, while internal, controllable, unstable attributions are associated with feelings of guilt. For example, a poor purchase attributed to ability would result in shame, whereas a poor product or service purchase decision based on effort would result in guilt. Additionally, shame also prompts a concern with others’ evaluation of the self, whereas guilt promotes concern with one’s effect on others. Experiencing shame can result in a considerable shift in self-perception, fostering a sense of worthlessness and powerlessness. Most people aim to remove themselves from these feelings, and, as a result, shame often leads to escapist behaviors and potentially maladaptive withdrawal from interpersonal experiences. Individuals experiencing shame may hold a set of beliefs about themselves that make it difficult to use the skills they have. It is not the intent to eliminate all self-conscious emotions, but rather the key seems to keep them in balance and find ways for individuals to deal with them effectively. An absence of shame and guilt have been theoretically linked to sociopathic and antisocial types of behavior, while excessive feelings of guilt, and especially shame, have been linked to depression, low self-concept, social withdrawal, and obsessive reactions. Similarly, the self-conscious emotion of pride can be elicited in many situations, including achievement related events and behavior, relationships, and family. Similar to the distinction between shame and guilt, two facets of pride are recognized in the self-conscious emotion literature. Authentic, or beta, pride is pride based on one’s actions and results from attributions to internal, unstable, controllable causes. An alternate form of pride, hubristic, or alpha, pride is pride in the global self and is attributed to internal, stable, uncontrollable causes. While pride in one’s successes has been suggested to promote positive consumer behavior, the hubristic pride has been negatively associated with self-esteem, and more strongly related to narcissism than authentic pride. The self-conscious emotions are related to various cognitions and behaviors, particularly those involving self-evaluation. Self-presentation, which is the process by which people attempt to control the perceptions others form of them, can result in self-presentational concerns, such as social physique anxiety a subtype of social anxiety that occurs as a result of the prospect or presence of interpersonal evaluation involving one’s physique. This is often linked to maladaptive behaviors and cognitions, such as unhealthy eating and fast food purchase behaviors and negative perfectionism especially in young consumers. In sum, elicitation of shame following failure, as well as the evaluation of the self-required to recognize failure, implies the influence of self-conscious emotions. In sum, the appraisal theories of emotion assume that it is a person’s subjective cognitive interpretation of an event (appraisal)—rather than the event itself—which elicits and differentiates between emotions. More specifically, they suggest that specific configurations of how people interpret an event along a set of appraisal dimensions determine which discrete emotion is elicited over another. For example, an event appraised as relevant but incongruent with one’s goals and caused by another person is proposed to elicit anger. Appraisal theorists suggest that these assessments can occur from conscious, deliberative information processing to unconscious, automatic processing. Given the subjective nature of appraisals, appraisal theories can explain why different events may elicit the same emotional response or why emotions toward the same event may vary from person to person and over time—it all depends on an individual’s interpretation of that event in terms of her or his personal well-being. Although appraisal theorists propose a somewhat different set of appraisal dimensions and discrete emotions, a high degree of convergence on the nature of the appraisal dimensions exists. As a fundamental appraisal dimension, individuals are viewed as evaluating the relevance and congruence of an event with regard to personal goals or motives. While goal relevance evaluations determine whether an event is personally relevant, and hence an emotion is elicited at all (i.e., intensity of emotions), the motive consistency appraisal discriminates between emotions’ valence: An event appraised as motive-consistent is suggested to elicit positive emotions, and an event judged as motive-inconsistent is likely to produce negative emotional responses. Some appraisal theorists further assume that people cope with emotions in an adaptive manner that affects cognitive processes or behavior coping, or both. From a functional perspective, emotions are conceived of as preparing an individual for an appropriate adaptive response to the demands of a personally relevant event. Hence, emotions comprise of both strong motivational forces and discrete emotions and have distinct action tendencies or coping responses.
Social Comparison Emotions
Emotion is made up of a number of components, most often considered within the context of the so-called reaction triad of psychological arousals, motor expressions, and subjective feelings. The strength of emotions can be realized when they are sensed as feelings felt. Everyone experiences these feelings. But, the concept of emotion goes beyond this; the perception of how intense one’s own emotions are compared with others’ emotions is a recurring and central theme in social emotion perception. People’s perception that their own distress about potential emergency situations is stronger than others’ anguish is one reason why people fail to intervene in emergency situations. People’s perception that they are more concerned about potentially harmful social norms compared with other humans is one reason why folks conform to social norms in public, which they reject in private. The belief that one’s own emotions are more intense than others’ emotions may be particularly pronounced for self-conscious emotions—which are often privately experienced and publicly concealed—such as fear of embarrassment, concerns about appearing politically incorrect, and other self-relevant anxieties. This implies that people generally perceive their own emotions as more intense than others’ emotions, and that these perceptions can have profound and diverse consequences for social behavior. The perceived difference in emotional intensity between the self and others is pronounced when emotions are immediately or recently experienced. The meaning of emotion is generally constructed by social interaction leading to an understanding of accepted behavior and value patterns. In this sense, the meaning of emotions may vary between cultures and subcultures. Emotions are not simply internal events but are communicative acts addressed to specific audiences, and are thus partly defined according to conventional cultural representations. Also, the cultural differences in the conceptualization of the self can play a significant role in shaping emotional experiences. For example, if you are from an Asian culture, you may have a greater focus on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other, resulting in different experiences of such emotions as pride, guilt, and anger in comparison with Western peers who are more focused on individual and inner attributes. Thus, the cultural context of consumption will lead to socially constructed emotional responses, under the direction of situational norms. We continually interpret the situations we face through the values we have and also have a preference to experience things that reinforce these values. Oftentimes, interacting with others will impact not only one’s behavior and thoughts, but also one’s affective state because of the social induction of affect. People unconsciously start to imitate the facial expressions of the other person, which elicits the same affect in them. As a consequence, they converge affectively toward the other’s affective state. We experience concordant affective reactions to persons we feel similar to. There is a strong drive to feel equal to members of the similar group to maintain affective and cognitive balance. However, when we feel dissimilar to another person, a discordant affective reaction, that is, competition or conflict arises. Thus, people’s affective reactions sometimes seem to converge, although at other times they diverge. Seeing another person smile may make you feel good or bad. When similarities between oneself and another person are in the foreground, the likelihood of concordant affective reactions seems to increase. For example, experiencing a similar situation or belonging to the same culture or group lead to concordant affective reactions, otherwise the discordant affective reactions are more likely. Thus, similarity plays a central role in social comparison emotions. Social comparisons are a major determinant of information accessibility, and, as such, social comparisons may also influence evaluations of one’s own affective state. Self-evaluations may be influenced by spontaneous comparisons with accessible standards. For example, evaluating one’s own affective state in a social situation, that is, in the direct or indirect presence of another, may be shaped by spontaneous comparisons linking social comparisons and affective experiences. For example, seeing a happy in group member may lead to a better mood in the perceiver, whereas seeing a happy out group member may lead to a decrease in the perceiver’s mood. From this perspective, concordant and discordant affective reactions can be viewed as being influenced by social comparison processes. In addition, consumer behavior may not abruptly change when national borders are crossed and segments of consumers across national boundaries might be more similar than those within the same country. Therefore, the major challenge companies are facing in an international marketplace is to identify and satisfy the common needs and desires of global market segments. However, it is useful to use groups of consumers instead of countries as a basis for identifying international segments; as within a segment and regarding a particular—culture-independent—product category, consumer behaviors do not vary across cultures or countries. For example, information search and exchange can be regarded as universal consumer behaviors, and can be observed in all cultures.
Impact on Consumer Buying
Do emotions matter when it comes to buying goods and services? Similarly, do emotions have an impact on the decision-making process among consumers? Can there be an emotional capability of an organization to acknowledge, recognize, monitor, discriminate, and attend to emotions at both the individual and the collective levels. The marketers need to strike a balance between their own emotional commitment to offer goods and services, and the necessity to attend to the emotions of consumers purchasing the same. Emotions mix rather than marketing mix can turn out to be a decisive element in genuine relationships between marketers and consumers. For example, when we involve social media, we are allowing the consumer to talk back. Nowadays, in a digitized world too, consumer interests and their relevance become paramount because engaged consumers can interact on different platforms at the same time, and they want to see brands in action even before promises are made. Domino’s did the same thing by involving consumers on different platforms at the same time in their marketing campaigns, such as asking their consumers what changes they would like to see. Also, Domino’s very public admission of its own awfulness has opened the opportunity for consumer to express their emotions and talk back. Globally, brands are realizing and attempting to connect with the consumer at an emotional level in order to have a long lasting sustainable relationship with the user. In India, Domino’s has subsequently evolved from a functional to an emotional brand. It has moved from “Hungry Kya?” to “30 minutes or free” and later on to “Khushiyon Ki Home Delivery.” To assert this transformation in its brand identity and sustain high value equity, it has recently adopted a new positioning to connect deeper with the consumer. The new tagline of the brand now stands as “Yeh Hai Rishton Ka Time.” More specifically, its campaign conveys that Domino’s time is the time which people spend together in a casual and informal way, and it leads to the bonds that people share, becoming stronger, warmer, and more livelier. In sum, this conveys a new deeper and enduring level of emotional connect, with an attempt to evoke and enhance the happy memories and moments.
A social-constructionist approach believes that depending on relationships and social interactions emotions are enacted, that is, through their actions individuals actively take part in the construction of emotions related to their interpretations of the environment. This view on emotions also includes cognitive processes as an element in emotions. Both when emotions are unintentional and when we control or manage them, we are influenced consciously or unconsciously by societal norms, values, traditions, and morality. The social interaction process is an evolving process, fluid and constantly changing, where relationships are relative rather than fixed. It creates opportunities for those with the ability to form and exploit relationships. In such processes, the discourse of emotions and the management of emotions are vital elements. The display and managing of emotions are an adaptation to social and cultural norms and compliance to professional rules, if any. For example, there can be feeling rules, display rules, surface acting rules, and deep acting rules as a part of managing and experiencing the emotions at work. The display of emotion is understood as observable changes in face, voice, body, and activity level, which are accompanied by emotional states. Emotional states are a combination of maturation, socialization, and cognition that also involve neurophysiological and hormonal responses as well as facial, bodily, and vocal changes. A person’s emotional display is a function of several components, such as values, culture, age, and societal norms. Displayed emotions may reflect emotional experience defined as the interpretation and evaluation by individuals of their perceived emotional state and expression. Therefore, the display of emotions has a greater effect on consumers’ behavior than verbal messages. Customers will take the sales personnel’s emotional displays as key indicators of a company’s intentions and sincerity. Thus, the correct display of emotions can make managers and marketers more effective. However, if they do not display emotions that are consistent with their authentic feelings, considering emotions can be masked, hidden, controlled, or displayed without being experienced, there would be a mismatch between the experienced and displayed emotions that a consumer observes. At the same time, buying such a display of emotions that are not in accordance with one’s genuinely experienced emotions over a longer period of time may lead to emotional dissonance resulting in stress, emotional exhaustion, and less satisfaction to customers. The very fact that the person is displaying a dishonest emotion puts off a consumer; that is, faking any emotional display will not result in consumer relationship and engagement. It is the congruence of inner, subjective experience of emotion and outer behavioral displays and expressed emotion that results in repeat purchase and long-term relationships with customers. Furthermore, there is a prevailing belief among marketers that emotions are short term in character; that is, emotions as evaluative, affective, intentional, and short term. Remember that the emotions may also linger over time, constituting the direction and future of consumer interaction on a microlevel. These emotions can be long lasting and create emotional energy that can be characterized along a continuum from high to low in all social face-to-face encounters, with a shared focus. Consumers with high emotional energy typically display positive emotions, such as enthusiasm, solidarity, confidence, and commitment; whereas, low emotional energy consumers will typically show negative emotions, like alienation, strain, stress, and depression. Marketers should realize that high as well as low degrees of emotional energy are contagious within a group; that is, people become increasingly more aware of emotional undertones, facial, bodily, and vocal gestures and rhythms, thus getting more caught up in the main group feeling. Emotional contagion is a strong force within individuals in a group, where the display of emotions can lead to constructive or destructive end results, Whereas shared emotional energy would usually lead to a perfect buyer–seller relationship involving the notion of belonging or not belonging, that is, of inclusion or exclusion. Both may be at the epicenter of the interaction and driven by high emotional energy, or any one of them may be peripheral to the interaction remaining a member of the group but lacking emotional energy resulting in weak temporary encounters and not interactive long lasting buyer–seller relationship. Behavioral responses to an environment and emotional state are defined as approach-avoidance. Approach behaviors represent all positive behaviors or behavioral intentions directly or indirectly affected by the environment. The affective environmental component such as pleasant music, fresh scent, bright light, and soft fabrics evoke pleasure and arousal that leads to patronage intentions, desire to stay more and longer, and liking to the extent of recommending the experience to others. There is an impact of environmental sensory stimuli, such as sight, sound, smell, and touch, on consumer behavioral intention. It is suggested that color, brightness, size, and shape act as a visual dimension that impact consumers’ purchase intention. For example, a cool color (e.g., blue) is more affective on pleasure, arousal emotions that influence the customer’s decision to spend money and time, as bright and colorful environment is correlated with pleasure and arousal, which attract consumer patronage. Also, the physical environment such as lighting, color, signage, style of furnishings, layout, and wall décor could be controlled by the organization to increase customers’ affective behavior. Similarly, the background music that influences consumer’s moods, service or product evaluation, and consumer decision should become a part of the atmosphere and ambience. For example, the tempo of music significantly affect the pace of in-store traffic flow and sales volume in a supermarket and also influences the dining speed, money spent, and length of stay in a restaurant. The characteristics of music like tempo, tonality, and texture stimulate customer’s emotion and induce customer’s behavioral reaction. Pleasant scent and congruent scent can also increase money and time spent in the retail context. In sum, the feelings are the primary medium of humans’ judgment and decision-making system. The moment consumers make a decision based on what they see, listen, smell, and touch in their surrounding situation, they are immediately operating their emotions as valuable signals.
Conclusion
Emotions are not static; they can affect a company’s long-term business success. They can be measured, enhanced, and managed. It is not easy, but it’s demonstrably possible. Consumers are typically highly emotional about some brands and products, while completely indifferent and unattached to others. Consumers’ emotional connections have a specific and fairly simple structure, regardless of the nature of the particular emotions involved. Emotional connections have powerful financial consequences, ranging from the share-of-wallet to the frequency and amount of repeat business. Fully engaged retail customers spend and return more frequently than those who are disengaged. Retailers who have taken action to enhance their customer engagement by capitalizing on the engagement-building skills of their own customer-facing employees have seen double-digit increases in both sales and profit per square foot. For example, Gallup has seen these results not just in the United States, but around the globe. Companies that are successful in creating emotional connections benefit from stronger results, not only in cash flow and profit, but also in market share. Thus, various structures and perspective of emotions contribute toward the development of understanding the role of emotions and their influence on consumer learning and engagement. Chapter 3 discusses the emotional expressions, experiences, and regulations in social contexts.