What you need to know about how our emotions can deeply affect your buying — and selling — behavior. From Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
In one episode of the hugely successful television series Sex and the City, the main character, Carrie Bradshaw, is walking down a New York City street with close friend Samantha Jones, who is telling Carrie why she’s felt so sad recently. Samantha is walking with a noticeable limp. At one point in the conversation, Samantha exclaims, “Ow!” In response, Carrie enquires, “Honey, if it hurts so much, why are we going shopping?” Samantha retorts, “I have a broken toe, not a broken spirit.”
Each year, millions of us who feel down try to alleviate our sorrow through shopping. A recent study conducted by social psychologist Jennifer Lerner and her colleagues investigated how emotions such as sadness can deeply affect people’s buying — and selling — behavior, providing us with some interesting insights about the prevalence of this phenomenon. The researchers hypothesized that the experience of sadness activates the motivation in people to alter their circumstances, which might help them change their mood and get them out of their funk. They also thought that this motivation would affect buyers and sellers in different ways: Sad buyers would be willing to pay a higher price for a given item than neutral buyers, whereas sad sellers would part with the same item for a lower price than neutral sellers.
In an experiment designed to test these ideas, the researchers induced either sadness or no emotion in their participants by having them view one of two different film clips. Those assigned to the sadness-inducing condition watched a movie clip from the film The Champ, which featured the death of a boy’s mentor; following that, they were asked to write a brief paragraph about how they’d feel if they’d been in the situation portrayed in the clip. Those assigned to the no-emotion condition watched an emotionally neutral film clip featuring fish and then wrote about their day-to-day activities. Afterward, all participants were told that they were about to take part in a second, unrelated study. Some of the participants were given a set of highlighters and asked to set a price at which to sell them, whereas the other half were asked to set a price at which they would buy the very same item.
The results supported Lerner’s assertions. Sad buyers were willing to purchase the item for around 30 percent more than were emotionally neutral buyers. And sad sellers were willing to part with the item for around 33 percent less than were their emotionally neutral counterparts.
What’s more, the researchers found that the carryover of the emotion from the movie into their economic decisions occurred completely outside of the subjects’ awareness — they had no idea they had been so deeply affected by these residual feelings of sadness.
It’s not just the negative emotions that can affect our decision-making tendencies. Behavioral scientists Christopher Hsee and Yuval Rottenstreich have asserted that people’s judgment and decision-making abilities can be impaired by any emotionally charged issue, regardless of the positivity or negativity of the feelings it produces.
They argue that emotions lead people to become less sensitive to differences in the magnitude of numbers; in other words, people are more likely to pay attention to the simple presence or absence of an event as opposed to the specific numbers that characterize the event. What this means is that people are more likely to pay attention to the simple presence or absence of an emotion-laden offer as opposed to the specific numbers that characterize the offer.
How can we prevent these factors from influencing us? The findings from this study indicate that doing something as simple as focusing on numbers and calculations before the negotiation should help restore your ability to differentiate between the magnitudes of numbers.
It might even behoove you to come prepared with a pricing sheet and a calculator in hand, and always keep them in front of you on the table.
More generally, though, it’s extremely important to recognize what emotional state or mood you are in before you make an important decision, begin a crucial negotiation, or even respond to an unfriendly or aggressive email. For example, suppose you have the task of negotiating the financial terms of your contract with a vendor. If you’ve just gone through an emotional experience, even though you might think your decision-making ability would be unaffected, you should consider holding off on the negotiation process. This short delay will allow time for those emotions to subside, allowing you to make more rational choices.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Robert B. Cialdini is the author of the bestseller Influence and the president of INFLUENCE AT WORK (www.influenceatwork.com). Steve J. Martin is the Managing Director of INFLUENCE AT WORK. And Noah J. Goldstein is a faculty member at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Together they are the authors of Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive (Copyright © 2008 by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini).
MORE ARTICLES BY THE AUTHORS
LEARN MORE
- Read an excerpt from Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
- Read the Introduction to the book
Retail is end of supply chain, in a business process Retailing and Marketing are two different terms but their main motto is to improve business.