The Mind and Heart of Resonance: The Role of Cognition and Emotions in Frame Effectiveness

• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Date: 01 July 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12278

The Mind and Heart of Resonance: The Role of

Cognition and Emotions in Frame Effectiveness

Simona Giorgi

Carroll School of Management, Boston College

ABSTRACT This article synthesizes the large and burgeoning literature on framing to unpack

how frames achieve resonance with an audience. The analysis identifies two main resonance

types: cognitive, based on an appeal to audiences’ beliefs and understandings, and emotional,

based on an appeal to audiences’ feelings, passions, and aspirations. For each type, this paper

delves into distinct mechanisms, applications, and outcomes to shed light on the complex

bases for audiences’ reactions to framing and the factors that can hinder or favour resonance.

Applications for this conceptualization of resonance and future venues of research are

identified and discussed.

Keywords: audiences, cognition, emotions, framing, resonance

During the US presidential campaign of 2016, the media greatly downplayed the chan-

ces of Donald Trump’s electoral success (Lohr and Singer, 2016). Many of Trump’s pro-

posals were seen as improbable or unfeasible (Carpenter, 2016); nonetheless, a large

percentage of voters identified with this candidate and did not ‘care what he’s saying,

necessarily... It’s emotion. It’s a lot of emotion’ (Cheney, 2016). In other words, politi-

cal pundits had overlooked the role of fears, aspirations, and passion as a powerful basis

for appealing to public opinion. In the culinary realm, industry experts have attributed

the success of sushi in the USA to the creation of the California roll, which leveraged

ingredients such as rice, avocado, and cucumber to align with consumers’ existing tastes

and understandings (Eyal, 2015). Because this type of roll framed Japanese cuisine in a

familiar way, sushi came to resonate with many consumers, suggesting that audiences

appreciate easy-to-understand innovations. These examples, among others, hint at dif-

ferent bases for resonating with one’s audience and, more specifically, point at the

potentially distinct role of emotions and cognition in determining a particular framing’s

success.

Address for reprints: Simona Giorgi, Carroll School of Management, Boston College, 140 Commonwealth

Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA (simona.giorgi@bc.edu).

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C2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

Journal of Management Studies 54:5 July 2017

doi: 10.1111/joms.12278

Research in organization studies has shown that framing – the packaging and organi-

zation of information – can be a powerful tool for shaping others’ understandings and

behaviours (Zerubavel, 1991) because it brings attention to a few stylized dimensions of

reality, while hiding others (Goffman, 1974; Hallahan, 1999). Frames can mobilize

groups in support of a political or social cause (Rao, 2008), favour the establishment of a

strategic vision within an organization (Kaplan, 2008), foster the application of a new

technology (Leonardi, 2011), or bestow honours and awards within an institutional field

(Giorgi and Weber, 2015). The consensus among scholars is that frames are effective at

influencing an intended listener or audience when they resonate, i.e. match or align

with the audience’s beliefs, values, aspirations, or ideas (Snow and Benford, 1988; Snow

et al., 1986). As the examples above suggest, resonance acts as the essential bridge that

links framing to desired outcomes.

Despite this concept’s centrality in the rich literature on framing, we still lack a clear

conceptualization of resonance; more specifically, our current understandings of the

mechanisms through which resonance manifests itself and influences frame effectiveness

are still limited. This is due to two main reasons. First, current studies invoke resonance

to refer to a burgeoning range of phenomena: a sense of connection with mainstream

beliefs and values (Taylor and Van Dyke, 2004), a perceived fit in cognitive schemas in

an institutional setting (Khaire and Wadhwani, 2010), personal identification with a

product (Massa et al., 2016), or a response to pragmatic needs and interests (Whittier,

2014), for instance. Without systematization, resonance risks becoming an umbrella con-

struct and eventually collapsing (Hirsch and Levin, 1999). Second, most framing

research simply takes stock of resonance ‘ex post’ (Williams, 2004), i.e., after the achieve-

ment of an intended outcome, it is inferred that such frame must have resonated with

the audience. By glossing over the mechanisms that underpin the achievement of reso-

nance, extant research limits scholars’ and practitioners’ ability to offer a diagnosis and

prognosis of framing success or failure.

As studies on framing proliferate without a clear understanding of the bases of its

effectiveness and the processes that underpin it, the need for a more systematic

approach to resonance is important and timely. This article addresses this gap by identi-

fying and discussing two main pathways by which to frame effectiveness – namely, cog-

nition and emotions. To shed light on how and why certain frames achieve resonance

and others fail to do so, this papers shifts the attention away from extant literature’s tra-

ditional emphasis on framers and their goals (Battilana et al., 2009; DiMaggio, 1988)

towards the mechanisms that can make framing particularly salient to an audience.

Rather than treating audiences as passive recipients of framing strategies (for recent cri-

tiques, see Bitektine, 2011; Williams, 2004), this paper hones in the dynamic interaction

between audiences and frames, and the factors that can favour or hinder such interac-

tion in a given context.

Two main contributions to our current understandings of framing emerge from this

perspective: first, this article contributes to research in organization theory and social

movements by providing a conceptual model of resonance. Such a model hinges on a

bipartite typology – cognitive and emotional resonance – that is not meant to be exhaus-

tive in capturing all the pathways through which framing can lead to a desired outcome,

but that identifies cognition and emotions as two main bases for frame effectiveness.

712 S. Giorgi

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C2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies