Four Perspectives on . . .
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out the possibility that high BIS persons took longer to read the recommendations segment of the
message or that they waited until their fear had subsided to respond to the questionnaire. Clock-
time indices of emotional response would be needed to provide compelling evidence of our
interpretation. Nonetheless, the results direct our attention to an intriguing possibility and lay the
groundwork for future research on BIS reactivity and emotional duration.
If the behavioral activation system is the source of positive emotion, then it should be
unrelated to a negative emotion such as fear. That logic provided the basis for H3 which asserted
that BAS and fear would show low to zero levels of association. In fact, the data showed
nonsignificant correlations between the BAS and all of the indices of fear. Although a statistical
power analysis indicated that we could not rule out the possibility of a weak association, power
to detect a moderate or larger effect was .99 or better. This evidence for that lack of a
relationship between BAS and negative emotion is compatible with previous research on public
service advertising, which reported that the BAS was unrelated to velocity measures of anger,
fear, sadness, and guilt, but positively and significantly associated with happiness and
contentment (Author Withheld). In sum, the current findings contribute to the growing body of
theory and data that distinguish the inhibition and activation systems in terms of their capacity to
produce negative and positive relationships respectively.
Acceleration, Velocity, Deceleration and Persuasion
All three of the dynamic fear indices showed positive and significant bivariate
associations with our measure of persuasion. However, a series of regression analyses, which
pitted perspectives against the other, provided evidence that favored some perspectives over
others. Regarding emotion dynamics, one general conclusion that emerges from the data is that
Convention