Emotional power

When we are communicating, the role of emotion is a vital one. People respond readily to emotions, and many of us remember an emotional impact long after we’ve forgotten the words that were said. It means that to get a message across, we can employ emotion to support our words. Facial expression is all-important. A smile can light up a message, a frown cast it down. Storytelling is so terribly important. And humour. And it seems that this has now been proven by research, according to this article. High emotion contributes to great opera. It does not, however, serve us well when making judgments about others. This is the argument advanced in "Feeling and Believing: The Influence of Emotion on Trust," a new paper by Maurice E. Schweitzer, Wharton professor of operations and information management, and PhD student Jennifer Dunn. The two researchers show how incidental emotions -- emotions from one situation that influence judgment in a following, unrelated situation -- affect our willingness to trust others, and thus our responses in certain business and social contexts. As Schweitzer puts it: "Did you give someone a big contract because of his reputation for dependability or because he told you a funny, uplifting story prior to making the deal?" You can read more at this site. And if you want to learn more about using emotion in your communications to make them more effective, visit an ITC club.