Goal‐Relevant Emotional Information: When Extraneous Affect Leads to Persuasion and When It Does Not

We investigate how extraneous or incidental emotions influence product evaluations as a function of consumers' salient goals. By manipulating specific emotions that correspond closely to two basic categories of human goals (achievement vs. protection), we extend affect-as-information theory and show that product judgments are a function not simply of the valence of extraneous emotions but also of the correspondence between specific emotions and salient goals. When consumers' achievement goals are salient, achievement-related emotions (cheerfulness and dejection) are more informative for evaluations than protection-related emotions (quiescence and agitation); the opposite is true when consumers' protection goals are salient.