An investigation into the moderating role of fear appeals on the relationship between regulatory fit and persuasion

As one of the ways to persuade young people effectively, several scholars have indicated that using a tailored message that is consistent with individuals’ concerns and interests can influence their attitude and behavioral changes. Among diverse tactics to construct tailored health-messages, this research especially paid attention to individuals’ motivational goals (i.e., regulatory focus) that make them more inclined to a certain outcome. While promotion-oriented individuals primarily focus on how to achieve a desired ending, prevention-oriented individuals mainly focus on avoiding undesirable outcomes (Higgins, 1997; Higgins et al., 2001). Although numerous studies support the positive effects of the congruency between regulatory focus and message frame on persuasion, the researcher was concerned with the limited discussion about the effects of some message attributes (i.e., fear appeals) in tailored health-related Public Service Announcements (PSAs). In particular, a large number of health campaigns provide information in the context of highly emotive graphic images and text; however, the stimulus used in previous studies did not consider such factors’ possible moderating effects. In the context of an anti-binge drinking health campaign, the researcher therefore focused on how the level of fear in tailored messages influences college students’ perceptions of the message, their message processing, and their attitudes and behavioral changes. Using a 2 (regulatory focus: promotion vs. prevention) X 2 (message framing: gain vs. loss) X 2 (level of fear appeals: low vs. high) experimental design, the researcher found that messages that are consistent with individuals’ interests are more persuasive. When the tailored message contained a low fear appeal, more fluent message processing and greater perceptions of message relevance occurred, which in turn impacted persuasion. However, the findings indicate that message effectiveness should be discussed cautiously because the effectiveness of tailored messages is reduced when combined with a high fear appeal. Overall, this study advances our understanding of how a tailored message’s attributes influence individuals’ message processing and persuasion. The findings have practical and theoretical implications for future studies on the use of emotional appeals in persuasive advertising

Emotions in archetypal media content

Emotion is an intriguing and mysterious psychological phenomenon. While everyone seems to know what it is, researchers have not yet come to consensus on its definition, and many questions still remain unanswered. While the nature of emotion is yet to discover, the design community has noticed is importance, and poses the challenge of how emotion could inform design. We see the necessity to follow the state of the art in psychology and initiate the undertaking by exploring the emotional qualities in various types of media content. The first part of this thesis aims at constructing a theoretical framework. Recent years have seen empirical studies suggest that emotion could be unconscious. While this is to be further justified, scientists are motivated to reconsider current theories of emotion to account for this phenomenon. In light of this, we integrate these studies about unconscious emotion into our literature review. An overview from theory to practice is illustrated to provide a reference for viewing the current states in application domains, such as affective computing and emotional design. This review offers a holistic understanding about emotion from various perspectives, which allow us to look for new directions in future studies. Based on our review, we see a promising direction by applying psychoanalysis methods to analyze the media content as affective stimuli, and these stimuli can be evaluated by using quantitative measures to investigate the connection between the content and the corresponding emotions. The analysis on the media content is based on a psychoanalysis theory¿the theory of archetypes¿proposed by Carl Jung. He argues that there exists a universal pattern in humans¿ unconscious thoughts, which can be manifested as symbolic content in various forms of narratives, such as myth and fairy tales. Today, this archetypal symbolic content can be seen in modern media, particularly in movies. By applying the Jungian approach, we analyzed the symbolic meaning in movie scenes and edit these feature scenes into a collection of archetypal media content, which serve as the experimental materials for later explorations. In the second part of this thesis, we present three experimental studies that aim at determining if archetypal media content can be differentiated based on emotional responses. We adopted the psychoanalytical approach described earlier to collect feature scenes in movies as archetypal media content. Meanwhile, affective stimuli of explicit emotions are also included as benchmarks for comparison, such as sadness and joy. Self-reports and physiological signals are both adopted for measuring emotional responses. These three studies follow similar experimental design: presenting stimuli and measuring emotion concurrently. The results of these studies confirm that emotions induced by archetypal content are different from explicit emotions, and the statistical analysis further indicate that the predictive model obtained from physiological signals outperforms the model generated from self-reports while viewing archetypal media content. These results, however, are opposite to the results gained from affective stimuli of explicit emotions, leading us to the conclusion that archetypal media content might induce unconscious emotions, and physiological signals are more effective than self-reports for recognizing emotions induced by archetypal media content.La emoción es un fenómeno psicológico intrigante y misterioso. Aunque todo el mundo parece saber lo que es, los investigadores aún no han llegado a un consenso sobre su definición, y todavía quedan muchas preguntas sin respuesta. Si bien la naturaleza de las emociones está aún por descubrir, la comunidad de profesionales del diseño ha entendido su importancia, y se plantea el desafío de interrelacionar ambos mundos, explorando de las cualidades emocionales en diversos tipos de contenido en medios de comunicación. La primera parte de esta tesis tiene como objetivo la construcción de un marco teórico. Recientemente se han realizado estudios empíricos que sugieren que las emociones puede ser inconscientes. Si bien esto debe justificarse mejor, los científicos están motivados a reconsiderar las teorías actuales de la emoción para explicar este fenómeno. En vista de ello, integramos estos estudios sobre las emociones inconscientes en nuestra revisión de referencias bibliográficas incluyendo dominios de aplicación recientes, tales como la Computación Afectiva y el Diseño Emocional. Una dirección prometedora de investigación se basa en la aplicación de métodos del psicoanálisis para analizar contenidos multimedia como estímulos afectivos, y estos estímulos pueden ser evaluados mediante el uso de medidas cuantitativas para investigar la conexión entre el contenido y las emociones correspondientes. Este análisis se basa en la teoría de los arquetipos propuesto por el psicólogo Carl Jung. El autor sostiene que existe una patrón universal en los pensamientos inconscientes de los personas, que puede manifestarse como un símbolo contenido en las diversas formas de narrativas, como en los mitos y los cuentos de hadas. Hoy en día, estos arquetipos de contenido simbólico se puede ver frecuentemente en los contenidos multimedia modernos, sobre todo en las películas. Mediante la aplicación del enfoque de Jung, analizamos el significado simbólico en escenas de películas seleccionando las correspondientes a diversos arquetipos, que servirá como material experimental para exploraciones posteriores. En la segunda parte de esta tesis, se presentan tres estudios experimentales que apuntan a determinar si el contenido multimedia arquetípico puede diferenciarse en base a respuestas emocionales. Con el enfoque psicoanalítico descrito anteriormente para los arquetipos, también se incluye los estímulos afectivos de emociones explícitas son como puntos de referencia para la comparación, como la tristeza y la alegría. Se realizan auto-informes y se miden señales fisiológicas para la determinación de las respuestas emocionales en todos los experimentos realizados. Los resultados de estos estudios confirman que las emociones inducidas por arquetipos son diferentes de las emociones explícitas, y el análisis estadístico indica además que el modelo predictivo obtenido a partir de señales fisiológicas supera el modelo generado por los auto-informes durante la visualización de contenidos multimedia arquetípicos. Estos resultados, sin embargo, son opuestos a los resultados obtenidos a partir de los estímulos afectivos de emociones explícitas, llevándonos a la conclusión de que los contenidos de los medios arquetípicos podría inducir emociones inconscientes, y que las señales fisiológicas son más eficaces que los auto informes para el reconocimiento de las emociones inducidas por el contenido de medios arquetípico. En la tercera parte de esta tesis, exploramos cómo los contenidos arquetípicos podrían utilizarse para diseñar contenido multimedia mediante "mood boards". Se realizaron dos estudios con diseñadores para responder a la pregunta de investigación de si es posible generar contenido emocionalmente rico a través de la generación automática de contenido arquetípico por "mood boards" en comparación con el contenido multimedia no arquetípico

Comparing live to recorded music and stories using multiple psychoneuroendocrine and psychological measures

Listening to music brings health benefits, according to an expanding opus of empirical research. Studies to date cover a wide range of music interventions and outcome measures. Music has been applied to healthy participants, as well as clinical populations to target anxiety and pain. But little is known about whether live music is more effective than recorded music as an intervention for these common symptoms. This exploratory study sought answers with the emerging science of saliva analysis, which focuses on biomarkers that indicate stress and immune function. In this case salivary cortisol, alpha-amylase, immunoglobulin-A, interleukin- 1beta, and pH levels were measured. Saliva samples from 50 university students and 23 palliative care and surgical patients were compared before and after each participant listened to a live (ML), audiovisual (MAV) or audio recorded (MA) standardised program of classical music played on a solo violin, viola or cello. Live (SL) or audio (SA) story readings were added as interventions to control for psychosocial variables. Saliva’s non-invasive, repeatable, objective psychoneuroendocrine (PNE) snapshots were supplemented with subjective visual analogue scales for anxiety (VASA) and pain (VASP), and self-report affect scales to rate liking, perceived and felt emotion, and absorption. Participants were also asked for a one-word summary of their listening experience. It was anticipated that ML would reduce anxiety and pain, as well as boost the immune markers, more than MAV and MA, and that music overall would demonstrate stronger benefits than the story readings. No single outcome measure provided sufficient data to draw conclusions, but trends in the melange of both objective and subjective instruments revealed that overall more positive health indicators arose from live music than recorded music, particularly in the clinical settings. Stories were also shown to have some moderating effects on pain and anxiety. This study demonstrated the therapeutic values of music as well as story readings, and the superior benefits of live music and stories compared to audio recordings of the same presentations. The PNE methodology had some limitations, particularly with the clinical population, resulting in gaps in the patients’ biomarker data. Some differential results highlighted the value of using a kaleidoscope of both objective and subjective outcome measures to gain a fuller understanding of the complex cognitive, emotional, neural, hormonal, and biopsychosocial processes involved in music’s beneficial effects