Controllability and consumers' preference for sad and happy esthetic stimuli when feeling sad
研究发现，消费者在失败后感到悲伤时，对悲伤或快乐审美刺激的偏好取决于失败原因的可控性：可控性高时更偏好悲伤刺激以维持对失败的关注，可控性低时更偏好快乐刺激以转移注意力。
Abstract Drawing on the coping and emotion regulation literature, we argue that when consumers feel sad after a failure, their relative preference for sad (vs. happy) esthetic stimuli is a function of controllability or the extent to which the responsible party have control over the cause of the failure. Specially, when feeling sad, consumers' preference for sad (vs. happy) esthetic stimuli will increase (decrease) with controllability because sad esthetic stimuli facilitate approach‐oriented coping by maintaining consumers' attention toward the failure that elicits their sadness while happy esthetic stimuli facilitate avoidance‐oriented coping by diverting their attention away from the failure. The findings of four experiments provide evidence supporting the hypothesized effect of controllability on consumers' preference for sad (vs. happy) esthetic stimuli, and the predicted mediating role of attention deployment (toward the failure vs. away from the failure) in explaining the effect.