Which emotions does your story activate?
4 September 2023
How we feel about an issue drives how we think about it. We form judgements based on the emotions we experience. Emotional experiences consist of appraisals (assessment of information), action tendencies (what the emotion typically makes people do), a physiological response (neural, chemical and body language), and how the emotion feels for that individual. These aspects are what differentiates emotions from each other. If something makes us feel good, we will justify why it is right. If something makes us feel bad, we will find a reason to justify why it is wrong and disengage without a way to resolve those feelings.
Yet, when communicators often share emotions in stories, we typically reach on the ones that we think build empathy — sadness or anger. Scholars have examined the world of human emotions and have discovered that there are 27 unique archetypes of emotions that we have at our disposal when sharing stories.
Below we discuss different emotions in more depth. This summary is not exhaustive, but it can help the campaign team start to identify the emotions their target communities are likely feeling and the emotions that might inspire particular types of engagement.
Emotions like sadness and guilt can be effective for short-term engagement, but people are really good at avoiding information that would make them feel bad, especially when they do not have a way to resolve those feelings. Researchers have found that guilt is not effective in motivating action if the desired action is to overcome inequality or injustice. People are motivated to maintain a positive sense of self, and if the stories and messages regularly make them the bad guy in the story, they will disengage.
Fear focuses our attention to a potential threat and makes us want to fight, freeze or flee. When we don’t know how to take action against what we fear, we will flee or freeze. Fear motivates people to assess information systematically. As a result, we pay more attention to information when we are afraid.
Anger emotion lowers our ability to consider the perspectives of others, and it encourages us to form quick, emotionally driven decisions rooted in stereotypes. Anger, however, can also be a powerful emotion for mobilizing people against a common offender or enemy.
Pride can be effective in motivating people to engage in altruistic behavior. In her research, Michie (2009) writes that “pride motivates prosocial behavior in one of two ways. First, experiencing pride motivates people to act in ways that improve their image of self in the eyes of others. Second, pride motivates people to prosocial actions in order to feel better about themselves.
When people experience awe, an overwhelming positive feeling of being diminished in the presence of something greater than the self, they are more likely to be altruistic, self-reflective, open-minded and generous. Awe-inducing content is information-rich, and includes images of nature, music and art, and the stories and the accomplishment of others.
Love is a powerful emotion, particularly parental love. Research suggests that featuring children and baby animals is a way to activate parental love and increase compassion. But it’s easy to get this wrong, and campaigns have to be careful not to exploit stories and images of suffering children to increase engagement. This strategy has resulted in a harmful stereotypes and narrative about people in recipient countries.
Hope is a powerful emotion that increases feelings of efficacy and can motivate behavior change. Hope focuses attention on future rewards and possibilities, which can motivate people to take action to attain those outcomes. For people to feel hope they must see a future outcome as important, personally relevant, possible and inline with their existing goals and motives
Yet, when communicators often share emotions in stories, we typically reach on the ones that we think build empathy — sadness or anger. Scholars have examined the world of human emotions and have discovered that there are 27 unique archetypes of emotions that we have at our disposal when sharing stories.
Below we discuss different emotions in more depth. This summary is not exhaustive, but it can help the campaign team start to identify the emotions their target communities are likely feeling and the emotions that might inspire particular types of engagement.
Emotions like sadness and guilt can be effective for short-term engagement, but people are really good at avoiding information that would make them feel bad, especially when they do not have a way to resolve those feelings. Researchers have found that guilt is not effective in motivating action if the desired action is to overcome inequality or injustice. People are motivated to maintain a positive sense of self, and if the stories and messages regularly make them the bad guy in the story, they will disengage.
Fear focuses our attention to a potential threat and makes us want to fight, freeze or flee. When we don’t know how to take action against what we fear, we will flee or freeze. Fear motivates people to assess information systematically. As a result, we pay more attention to information when we are afraid.
Anger emotion lowers our ability to consider the perspectives of others, and it encourages us to form quick, emotionally driven decisions rooted in stereotypes. Anger, however, can also be a powerful emotion for mobilizing people against a common offender or enemy.
Pride can be effective in motivating people to engage in altruistic behavior. In her research, Michie (2009) writes that “pride motivates prosocial behavior in one of two ways. First, experiencing pride motivates people to act in ways that improve their image of self in the eyes of others. Second, pride motivates people to prosocial actions in order to feel better about themselves.
When people experience awe, an overwhelming positive feeling of being diminished in the presence of something greater than the self, they are more likely to be altruistic, self-reflective, open-minded and generous. Awe-inducing content is information-rich, and includes images of nature, music and art, and the stories and the accomplishment of others.
Love is a powerful emotion, particularly parental love. Research suggests that featuring children and baby animals is a way to activate parental love and increase compassion. But it’s easy to get this wrong, and campaigns have to be careful not to exploit stories and images of suffering children to increase engagement. This strategy has resulted in a harmful stereotypes and narrative about people in recipient countries.
Hope is a powerful emotion that increases feelings of efficacy and can motivate behavior change. Hope focuses attention on future rewards and possibilities, which can motivate people to take action to attain those outcomes. For people to feel hope they must see a future outcome as important, personally relevant, possible and inline with their existing goals and motives
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