Reactions to ideological websites: The impact of emotional appeals, credibility, and pre-existing attitudes.

Ideological groups use websites to exert influence on individuals’ beliefs, values, and social identities. This often involves, using negative emotional appeals and credibility tactics to influence website users’ emotional responses, attitudes, and intentions. However, we know little about the joint effects of affective appeals and credibility, especially when pre-existing ideological attitudes are taken into account. This study manipulated emotional appeals and credibility, while accounting for users’ pre-existing attitudes and examined their direct and join influences on users’ emotional responses, attitudes, and intentions. A number of findings, including a 3-way interaction for message derogation, demonstrated the power of emotional appeals and how they can influence a website visitor’s emotions. As expected, preexisting attitudes were also found to be important when attempting to understand how viewers are influenced by ideological websites.