It doesn't take much thought to realize that emotions have a strong link with motivation. In fact, this was one of the first conclusions reached by our two advertisers, Cheskin and Dichter.
But what role do they play in the development of motivation?
We need to start by distinguishing emotions from feelings. This may sound simple in theory, but in reality, the distinction is far more complex. This may have something to do with our vocabulary, which is too poor to describe all the subtleties of this field of research.
In Paul Ekman's sense, emotions are specific mental states characterized by rapid onset, limited duration, and involuntary arising.
On the other hand, feelings are built up over time and are consciously perceived, which is not always the case with emotions.
Paul Griffiths distinguishes two types of emotion: primary emotions, linked to our animal status (affect program), and more complex emotions, linked to our cultural environment (higher cognitive emotions).
There's a kind of continuum between the reflexive, animal emotional reaction and the deep, lasting feeling. And dividing it into sequences seems highly arbitrary.
What is certain is that emotions act as indicators of a situation to consider, an alert that activates our attention. This signal tells us we need to reassess the relevance of our choices.
Damasio has demonstrated the link between emotions and the quality of our choices. In his book "Descartes' Error", he presents his research work on a patient who was making choices that were inconsistent and often even disadvantageous to himself.
Experiments showed that his logical mind functioned perfectly, and his rationality and short-term memory were unaffected by lesions in his brain. On the other hand, he felt no emotion.
He could understand a situation and an individual's reaction but not feel its effects emotionally. No empathy, no sympathy, no affect.
This finding has been demonstrated time and again in other experiments. It confirms that our decisions and choices are intimately linked to our emotions.
For a long time, research has focused on the motivational form of negative emotions, such as fear and guilt.
It's not for nothing that one of the most effective sales techniques is the time-limited price offer. The fear of missing an opportunity is often stronger than reason.
FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out is a kind of social anxiety characterized by the constant fear of missing an important piece of news or of missing an opportunity to interact socially.
That's why we have those little red dots on our smartphone icons, to whet our curiosity to the point of transforming it into anxiety.
In 1979, behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky developed the concept of loss aversion. This concept is one of the many cognitive biases that disrupt our rationality when making choices and decisions.
They demonstrated that we are always more affected by the loss of a value than by the gain. And this plays tricks on us when we make a decision that involves a loss. Because even though the gain may turn out to be greater, our aversion to loss pushes us to reject the solution that would have been favorable to us to avoid the pain of the loss, however insignificant.
Likely, this loss aversion is directly linked to our primary genetic programming. When everything is scarce, we are careful not to lose anything. The risk is always greater when we don't know what will happen tomorrow. This is probably what drives some people who have lived through war or are in precarious situations to keep things that seem useless.
It's also why it's better to announce all the bad news at once and spread the good news over several occasions.
The repetition effect works in favor of positive emotions.