The Psychology of Emotion

Emotion is one of the most powerful tools a marketer can wield, and it is well known that the environment we find ourselves in can spark an unlimited number of emotional responses that influences how we behave in future.

But why? Are emotions rational or irrational? Do they have a strong biological basis? And why do we cluster emotions and behaviours together to explain the culture surrounding us?

Theories on how emotion evolved in humans have existed for over a hundred years. In 1917, Watson and Morgan were among the firsts to propose a behaviourist theory of emotion: that all feelings derive from habits and reflexes conditioned by the environment. They distinguished three basic emotions: fear, rage, and love.

It wasn’t until the field of psychoanalytics emerged that psychologists began to investigate the extent in which our emotions were rooted in biology. Rene Spitz, in his research into field theory in the late ‘50s, was the first to identify milestones in the emotional development of infants.

Throughout his research, he observed the smiling response, stranger anxiety, and semantic communication in infants. This led researchers such as Carroll Izard to examine the universally recognisable emotions that develop within the first 2-7 months of life.

Paul Ekman, a specialist on emotion, expanded on this. He identified six basic emotions that are identifiable across all cultures: happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust. These are 'universal truths', often molded by marketers to invoke a similar response.

Theories such as the facial feedback hypothesis – often used in advertising for dramatic effect – were developed from these results. Research has shown, for example, that forcing a smile can actually make us happier, even when we weren’t in the first place.

So emotion does have a biological basis, but that does not explain why so many emotions appear to be irrational.

Albert Ellis, one of the most influential psychologists in history, was a pioneer of research into irrational thinking. While developing his still-used rational-emotive behaviour therapy (REBT), Ellis noted a distinctly human tendency to catastrophize, in which we falsely assume that a single bad event will trigger the worst possible outcome.

Dan Kahneman and Amos Tversky would later delve into this field themselves, but it was Ellis who developed the initial model of situational response known as the ABC(DE) model:

• Activation of event (environmental trigger)
• Belief that is formed in response to event (rational or irrational)
• Consequences of beliefs (emotional and behavioural response)
• Disputing beliefs (questioning the validity of our response)
• Education (researching the basis of our beliefs)

Recent research into behavioural economics has somewhat challenged this conclusion, as we are more likely to hold onto initial beliefs instead of questioning them, but self-doubt surrounding the validity of our emotions is a very real phenomenon.

Emotions can be irrational when birthed from irrational beliefs. Even seemingly harmless examples such as “good things only happen to good people” and “the world is just” can lead us to feel and act in ways that are detrimental to our wellbeing. Disrupting beliefs protects against this.

Finally, culture can shape the way we perceive and act toward certain emotional responses. Humans are pattern-seeking creatures, and will naturally group similar associations together to make them easier to perceive. This includes the association between behaviours and emotions.

Schemas, a concept explored by psychologist Jean Piaget, are one way we do just that. These develop throughout childhood as a way to recognise new information and categorise it into something we can understand.

These are most relevant in social situations, as we are likely to group people, events, and the roles they play into categories that influence how we interact with them and what responses we give. By doing this, we can predict what future events may be like, and what emotions they may elicit.

Humans are unique in that they also possess self-schemas. We perceive these as being larger and more complex than social schemas, and are likely to carry more emotional weight.

But what social schemas and self-schemas have in common is a sense of ownership bias, in that we are attracted to things that are congruent with our schemas and are therefore more likely to remember them.

In marketing terms: salience.

This makes intuitive sense. We interpret the immediate environment in a way that makes sense to us. Of course we are more likely to be attracted to things that support our own judgment. However, when we project our schemas onto others, or assume that others interpret the environment the same way we do, irrational beliefs and emotions can follow.

Decades of psychological research has shown that emotions are biologically rooted, subject to biases of interpretation, and have the potential to be irrational when preceded by irrational beliefs.

This is because emotion is, as Dan Kahneman would put it, a System 1 process; the most malleable mode of thinking and of interest to marketers, psychologists, and researchers alike.

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