Conditional Promises and Threats – Cognition and Emotion

Abstract

Conditional promises and threats are speech acts that can be used to manipulate the behavior of other persons. Although reasoning studies have been able to reveal some peculiarities of these concepts, the explanation has remained fragmentary. To fill in this gap, a theoretical analysis of conditional inducements is proposed, which integrates cognitive as well as emotional aspects. An experiment – focussing on linguistic, pragmatic, emotional, and deontic consequences – corroborates the analysis and shows that persons have a clear understanding of conditional inducements.