The emotional appropriateness heuristic: Processing televised presidentialreactions to the news

This study introduces the concept of the emotional appropriateness heuristi c. An experiment investigated the effects of televised presidential reactio ns to compelling news events on memory, thought elaboration, and appropriat eness evaluations made by subjects. Assessment of the news story-presidenti al reaction message sequences was conceptualized as an interactive cognitiv e process that uses the heuristic to categorize and evaluate the nonverbal behavior of the president. Negative and low intensity presidential reaction s were expected and deemed appropriate. Positive or intense reactions tende d to violate normative expectations and were classified as inappropriate. F indings also indicate that the emotional redundancy of images across valenc e-congruent message sequences improves memory. Results further suggest that the emotional appropriateness heuristic may help explain a process by whic h citizens can accurately assess the performance of leaders in a mass democ racy, irrespective of political knowledge.