Emotions : functions and significance for attitudes, behaviour and communication

DENNISON, James

doi:10.1093/migration/mnad018

Emotions : functions and significance for attitudes, behaviour and communication

dc.contributor.author	DENNISON, James
dc.date.accessioned	2023-11-13T15:59:33Z
dc.date.available	2023-11-13T15:59:33Z
dc.date.issued	2024
dc.description	Published online: 03 August 2023	en
dc.description.abstract	Emotions are regularly cited as vital components of effective strategic communication. However, there is relatively little guidance about how emotions should be used. Eliciting emotions is key to persuasion because attitudes have a cognitive and emotive component, with predictable physiological outcomes that make messages more resonant and impactful on behaviour, supporting policy objectives. This article shows that communicators—in the field of migration and beyond—should choose their campaign’s emotional frame according to their desired physiological and behavioural reaction. This article applies the emotion schema of Plutchik to offer 32 separate emotions and their theorised physiological reactions, examples of stimuli, and behavioural societal effects. Furthermore, emotional outcomes can be altered via narratives, frames, personal-based messages, facial expressions and body language, aesthetics, ordering (‘emotional flow’), intensities, and combinations. Finally, the limits of emotion-based communication—not least the ‘appeal to emotion’ logical fallacy—and how to overcome those limits—grounding emotion-based communication in facts, values, identities, and efficacy—are considered. Emotion-based communication in the field of migration, although widely used, is largely untested so communicators should test different approaches but also can take lessons from fields such as corporate, health, and climate change communication.	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.citation	Migration studies, 2024, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 1-20	en
dc.identifier.doi	10.1093/migration/mnad018
dc.identifier.endpage	20
dc.identifier.issn	2049-5838
dc.identifier.issn	2049-5846
dc.identifier.issue	1
dc.identifier.startpage	1
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1814/76026
dc.identifier.volume	12
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.orcid.upload	true	*
dc.publisher	Oxford University Press	en
dc.relation.ispartof	Migration studies	en
dc.relation.ispartofseries	[Migration Policy Centre]	en
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess	en
dc.rights.license	Attribution 4.0 International	*
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/	*
dc.title	Emotions : functions and significance for attitudes, behaviour and communication	en
dc.type	Article	en
dspace.entity.type	Publication
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person.identifier.orcid	0000-0003-3090-7124
person.identifier.other	37178
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