1 Emotional labeling and attribute framing on pro- environmental product decision making Leandro Miletto Tonetto Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing and Zooma Porto Alegre, Brazil, ltonetto@yahoo.com Abstract: Attribute framing effect refers to the fact that different descriptions of the same element can cause different reactions in people. This paper describes an experiment that was aimed at investigating attribute framing on pro-environmental product decision-making, having the consumer´s socially responsible behavior as a moderating effect. Framing effect was detected, but not as a universal response, since the type of evaluated product and the consumer´s level of socially responsible behavior can interfere in people´s judgements, by not producing the effect. Key words: Consumption, Emotion, Attribute framing effect, Pro-environmental product, Decision making. 1. Introduction The term ´framing´ is used to refer to the various ways that decision situations are presented leading decision makers to construct different representations of given situations [1, 2]. ´Attribute framing effect´ refers to the fact that positively-framed attribute presentations (e.g., a fridge that saves 25% of electric in comparison to average equipment) are usually more sucessfull, or attractive to subjects than the negatively-framed descriptions (e.g., a fridge that spends 75% of electric compared to average equipment) [3]. Since the message content in the previous example is supposed to be identical, findings related to the framing effect suggest that people would be more sensitive to the message frame than to its content. The explanation for the higher persuasion level of the positive frame, compared to the negative frame, could be found on intuitive reactions (definded as System 1 1 ), which are emotion-based. When facing negative-framed attributes, an adaptive system would act by producing negative emotion labels, drawing persuasion levels down. Facing a gain frame, this adaptive system could produce a positive label and it could draw the persuasion level of the content upwards. This mechanism, which can draw persuasion levels up and down, according to positive and negative labeling, is called affect heuristic [4, 5]. This is not a universal rule, as specific kinds of messages tend to be more persuasive in the negative frame. Common health communications about cancer are examples of messages that are more persuasive in negative forms, since the loss of a life seems to be a stronger message than its maintenance. 1 System 1 (intuition) operations tend to be fast, automatic, associative, effortless, implicit, emotionally charged, governed by habit and difficult to control and modify. System 2 (reasoning) operations tend to be slower, serial, effortful, consciously monitored, deliberately controlled, relatively flexible and rule governed [6].