Lay Theories of Emotion Transience and the Search for Happiness: A Fresh Perspective on Affect Regulation

Aparna A. Labroo and Anirban Mukhopadhyay

Journal of Consumer Research, 2009, vol. 36, issue 2, 242 - 254

Abstract: Across six studies, we demonstrate that consumers have beliefs pertaining to the transience of emotion, which, along with their current feelings, determine the extent to which they regulate their immediate affect. If consumers believe that emotion is fleeting, those feeling happy (vs. unhappy) engage in affect regulation because they infer that they need to take actions to maintain their positive feelings. In contrast, if consumers believe that emotion is lasting, those feeling unhappy (vs. happy) engage in affect regulation because they infer that the negative feelings will persist unless they take actions to repair them. These effects are obtained with measured and with manipulated beliefs, and they occur only when the theories pertain specifically to emotion. Implications and areas for future research are discussed.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/597159 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/597159 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jconrs:doi:10.1086/597159

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Consumer Research is currently edited by Bernd Schmitt, June Cotte, Markus Giesler, Andrew Stephen and Stacy Wood

More articles in Journal of Consumer Research from Journal of Consumer Research Inc.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().