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. •This study manipulated emotional appeals and credibility on an ideological website.•Users’ pre-existing attitudes were taken into account.•The influences on users’ emotional responses, attitudes and intentions was examined.•Credibility had an effect when it was paired with the other IV’s.•Emotional appeals provoke emotionally consistent responses in website viewers.