Bringing together the literature on emotional appraisals and the literature on biased processing in judgment, two studies investigate how incidental emotions varying in valence and agency influence decision making after exposure to preference consistent vs. inconsistent information. We show that...

Four experiments show that emotions systematically influence judgments and persuasion by altering construal levels. Guilt-laden consumers, relative to those who were shame-laden, adopted lower levels of construal. In subsequent unrelated judgments, guilt increased reliance on feasibility over...