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The impact of hope and hopelessness on evaluation: A meta‐cognitive approach
Author(s) -
Requero Blanca,
Briñol Pablo,
Petty Richard E.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.2726
Subject(s) - psychology , salient , cognition , cognitive appraisal , meta analysis , social psychology , goal pursuit , developmental psychology , psychiatry , medicine , artificial intelligence , computer science
This research provides a novel analysis of the impact of hope and hopelessness on judgment, examining how they influence the use of judgment‐relevant thoughts. Hope and hopelessness are two ends of an emotional continuum for which the confidence and pleasantness appraisals are mismatched. That is, hope is appraised as a pleasant state that is associated with uncertainty. In contrast, hopelessness is appraised as an unpleasant state that is associated with confidence. The aim of this research is to show that these appraisals are critical for predicting how these emotions influence the impact of thoughts on attitudes. In three experiments we manipulated these emotions along with their appraisals and examined the impact on thought reliance and attitude change toward healthy and unhealthy foods, people with disabilities, and self‐evaluation. It was predicted and found that when a pleasantness appraisal was salient, hope increased the use of thoughts relative to hopelessness. In contrast, when a confidence appraisal was salient, hopelessness increased the use of thoughts compared to hope.