intense yearning), consumers are motivated to preserve
their feelings of hope. In reducing their uncertainty about
the possibility of attaining their goal-congruent outcome,
they prefer to conclude that such an outcome is possible,
not impossible. In other words, when hope is strong, processing
is tainted with directionality, and consumers seek to
reduce uncertainty in the direction of the possibility (rather
than the impossibility) of the outcome.2 Thus, we suggest
that when hope is strong, attitude favorability is based less
on the strength of message arguments than on the extent to
which the arguments suggest that the goal-congruent outcome
is possible. Rather than engaging in objective and
systematic processing, consumers engage in motivated reasoning,
another form of high-involvement processing.