I read a recent student from the JFK School for Government at Harvard which found that even momentary sadness causes people to increase their spending.

As persuaders, we know that consumers buy based on emotion, which is why we appeal to the core values and criteria of our prospects and clients. The Harvard study entitled, “Misery is Not Miserly: Sad and Self-Focused Individuals Spend More” will be published in ‘Psychological Science’ in June 2008. This study shows that when people are sad and focused inward, they tend to spend more money that people who are in neutral states of mind.

As persuaders, we can use anchoring and peak emotional states in our sales. We utilize self focus, introspection, and occasionally sadness, when working with our prospects and clients.

The study was performed by inciting a heightened state of self focus. Then the participant was shown either a sad video clip or a neutral video clip which advertised the product they were being presented with. The people who watched the sad clip offered 300% more than the neutral participants.

My guess is that a positive, happy and upbeat video clip would have had the same effect of increasing spending. Why? It’s an increased emotional state. If the researchers were aware of towards and away orientations, they’d have further developed a deep understanding of peak emotional states.

The towards and away continuum is powerful in determining how your prospect responds in a particular context. Not everyone views the world through rose colored glasses. In other words, there are some people who will respond quite positively to a negative attitude.

If you’re a financial adviser and you determine your prospect’s deepest criteria is ’security’, you can then determine the orientation by asking the question, ‘What will having financial security do for you?’ Depending on the answer, you can fashion the language you use to that orientation, whether towards or away.

If they say, ‘Well, I’m tired of worrying about my finances. . .’ That’s an away from. If they say, ‘Well, I just want to stay in control of my finances. . .’ That’s more of a toward orientation.

With the away from person, you don’t want to be optimistic, just as with the toward person, you don’t want to be pessimistic. Tailoring your language in such a way that you bring more “pain” to the away person and more “ease” to the toward is really the key to selling.

While the Harvard study has some interesting points, I don’t think they got all of the story.