Influence On Interpersonal Behavior
In striving for a deeper understanding of the AIM, scholars have examined different types of behavior that can be expected when affect (mood and emotion) strongly influences information processing. This is by no means an exact science, as the behavioral consequences of affect are usually indirect and varied, but they have been able to show that "affective states have a subtle and cognitively mediated influence on the ways people perform or inhibit complex strategic behaviors" (p. 206). In other words, emotion influences thinking and behavior in subtle ways. A person in a strongly positive mood may be more confident and use more direct interpersonal behaviors than they would if they were in a bad mood. They may feel 'untouchable' due to the many good things that have happened to them and approach complex situations with an increased level of assurance. As the research has shown, this effect becomes greater as a situation becomes more complex.
In this sense, the AIM is a potential instrument for propaganda campaigns that promote a link between positive affect and desired behavior. For example, many failed attempts to dissuade adolescents from smoking have involved morbid and gloomy advertisements that only serve to depress their viewers. According to the AIM, messages that establish a comfortable atmosphere and focus not on the consequences of smoking but on the benefits of not smoking, would probably be more successful.
Read more about this topic: Affect Infusion Model
Famous quotes containing the words influence on, influence and/or behavior:
“If morality had naturally no influence on human passions and actions, it were in vain to take such pains to inculcate it; and nothing would be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts with which all moralists abound.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“The talk shows are stuffed full of sufferers who have regained their health—congressmen who suffered through a serious spell of boozing and skirt-chasing, White House aides who were stricken cruelly with overweening ambition, movie stars and baseball players who came down with acute cases of wanting to trash hotel rooms while under the influence of recreational drugs. Most of them have found God, or at least a publisher.”
—Calvin Trillin (b. 1935)
“Children can’t make their own rules and no child is happy without them. The great need of the young is for authority that protects them against the consequences of their own primitive passions and their lack of experience, that provides with guides for everyday behavior and that builds some solid ground they can stand on for the future.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)