Research Insight | Leveraging Consumers' Anger to Help Them Make Better Decisions
Anger can cause reductions in self-control, as angry consumers are more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors to make themselves feel better. At the same time, anger activates a need to be dominant—a trait can potentially be leveraged to help angry consumers make healthier choices. This study shows that policymakers can motivate angry consumers to exert more self-control by emphasizing the dominance benefits of the more virtuous option in a self-control dilemma. For example, angry consumers are more likely to choose healthy eating options when these behaviors are associated with becoming physically stronger (e.g., “eat healthy not to be skinny, but to be badass”) rather than preventing illness (e.g., “eat healthy not to be skinny, but to be healthy”). The researchers test these effects across various domains of self-control, such as healthy eating, exercising, saving money, and studying. However, the positive effects of this approach occur only when angry consumers expect dominance benefits to accrue in the near—not distant—future.
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What You Need to Know
- Anger causes reductions in consumers’ self-control.
- Policymakers can encourage angry consumers to exert more self-control by highlighting how virtuous behaviors like saving money, exercising, or eating healthily will bring strength, power, and other benefits related to dominance.
- These effects occur only when angry consumers expect dominance benefits to accrue in the near future.
Abstract
Prior research has shown that anger can predispose consumers to exert poor self-control by making them want to feel better (i.e., increasing a hedonic need for mood repair), less likely to consider risks of gratifying, and more likely to seek rewards (i.e., increasing approach motivation). However, anger also activates a need to be dominant. Consequently, across five experiments, we show that policymakers can motivate angry consumers to exert more self-control by emphasizing the dominance benefits of the more virtuous option in a self-control dilemma. For instance, angry consumers are more likely to exercise or eat healthily when these behaviors are associated with becoming physically stronger rather than preventing illness. We test these effects across various domains of self-control, such as eating healthily, exercising, saving money, and studying, and with both binary choices between virtuous and gratifying options and choices on a spectrum in which consumers choose virtuous and gratifying options in varying proportions. However, we find these effects occur only when angry consumers expect dominance benefits to accrue in the near but not distant future
Shruti Koley and Caleb Warren, “Anger and Self-Control: How the Need to Dominate Can Lead to Better Choices,” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. doi:10.1177/07439156241265076.