This study examines how moods elicited by television programmes influence viewer attitudes, intentions, cognitive responses and recall when considered in conjunction with a commercial's affective tone, and message framing. Three hypotheses are tested addressing: (1) The predictions of the mood congruency and mood consistency models. (2) Whether mood effects for the two models are moderated by self-esteem. (3) The interaction of mood state and message framing.
An experiment using actual television programmes and differentially framed and affectively toned commercials found that sad commercials resulted in more favorable intentions and greater recall than happy commercials under both happy and sad mood conditions. These findings contradict prevailing mood theory, yet are supported by protection motivation theory, cognitive priming, stereotyping and self-discrepancy perspectives. The mood, affective tone and self-esteem interaction was not evident. Framing results support research on the negative bias and the notion that incongruent information prompts more elaborative processing.
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