Neural activity,neural connectivity,and the processing of emotionally valenced information in older adults: links with life satisfaction

This study examines whether differences in late-life well-being are linked to how older adults encode emotionally valenced information. Using fMRI with 39 older adults varying in life satisfaction, we examined how viewing positive and negative images would affect activation and connectivity of an emotion-processing network. Participants engaged most regions within this network more robustly for positive than for negative images, but within the PFC this effect was moderated by life satisfaction, with individuals higher in satisfaction showing lower levels of activity during the processing of positive images. Participants high in satisfaction showed stronger correlations among network regions—particularly between the amygdala and other emotion processing regions—when viewing positive, as compared with negative, images. Participants low in satisfaction showed no valence effect. Findings suggest that late-life satisfaction is linked with how emotion-processing regions are engaged and connected during processing of valenced information. This first demonstration of a link between neural recruitment and late-life well-being suggests that differences in neural network activation and connectivity may account for the preferential encoding of positive information seen in some older adults.     

“Transformation Tuesday”: Temporal context and post valence influence the provision of social support on social media

Social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook have become integral in the development and maintenance of interpersonal relationships. Users of SNSs seek social support and validation, often using posts that illustrate how they have changed over time. The purpose of the present research is to examine how the valence and temporal context of an SNS post affect the likelihood of other users providing social support. Participants viewed hypothetical SNS posts and reported their intentions to provide social support to the users. Results revealed that participants were more likely to provide social support for posts that were positive and included temporal context (i.e., depicted improvement over time; Study 1). Furthermore, this research suggests that visual representations of change over time are needed to elicit social support (Study 2). Results are discussed in terms of their practical implications for SNS users and theoretical implications for the literature on social support and social media.     

社交媒体分享线索如何影响消费者的选择：印象管理与自主感缺失

随着社交媒体, 第三方消费点评网站及各类电商平台的蓬勃发展, 消费者能够越来越容易地与他人分享自己的消费和体验。为了适应这一迅猛的发展势头, 企业采取一系列措施加入社交媒体营销刺激消费者分享。如在产品界面添加分享按钮, 在各大社交平台添加主题标签, 或者直接使用带有分享刺激的广告口号。与以往研究关注消费者决策后的分享行为不同, 本研究提出社交媒体分享线索在消费者决策中发挥着重要作用, 影响消费者的判断与选择。具体来说, 本项目认为社交媒体分享线索一方面激发了消费者的印象管理动机, 另一方面也降低了自主感, 在此基础上探究了的两个行为决策结果：产品兴趣和决策终止。本项目具有重要的理论意义, 突破前人研究大多关注决策后分享的局限, 对现有社交媒体分享, 及数字环境如何影响消费行为是有益的补充。在实践上, 对企业如何更好地开展社会化媒体营销有着重要的指导意义。     

Social Comparison as the Thief of Joy: Emotional Consequences of Viewing Strangers’ Instagram Posts

This experiment investigates the emotional consequences of viewing strangers’ positive posts on Instagram. From a social comparison perspective, strangers’ positive posts on social media are expected to negatively affect viewers’ emotions. From an emotional contagion perspective, strangers’ positive posts should positively affect viewers’ emotions. The current lab experiment examines both the social comparison and the emotional contagion perspective while taking individual differences into account. Participants viewed positive, neutral, or no posts of confederates. In support of the social comparison perspective, individuals who tend to compare themselves to others reported lower positive affect if they had viewed positive posts than if they had viewed neutral or no posts. In support of the emotional contagion perspective, individuals who tend not to engage in social comparison reported higher positive affect after viewing positive posts than after viewing neutral or no posts. These findings indicate that individual differences in processing tendencies lead people to respond to social information on social media in opposite ways.     

Are preferences in emotional processing affected by distraction? Examining the age-related positivity effect in visual fixation within a dual-task paradigm

Recent research has suggested that age-related positivity effects are eliminated under conditions of dual-task load (Knight et al., 2007, Emotion, 7, 705; Mather & Knight, 2005, Psychology and Aging, 20, 554), because the cognitive control resources necessary to enact such preferences are not available when individuals are distracted by competing information. We further examined how older adults' emotional information processing preferences are affected by distracting information by utilizing a within-subjects dual-task measure. Younger and older adults viewed a series of positive, negative, and neutral images both in conditions of full and divided attention. Fixation preferences to valenced images were assessed through eye tracking. Regardless of whether images were viewed in full or divided attention conditions, older adults demonstrated a preference in their fixation for positive and neutral in comparison to negative images. These results provide evidence that older adults' positive fixation preferences may not always necessitate full, cognitive control.     

Visual-Verbal Self/Other-Referential Processing Task: Direct vs. indirect assessment, valence, and experiential correlates

This study evaluated a new methodology for assessing valenced Self-Referential Processing (SRP) in comparison with Other-Referential Processing (ORP). Participants viewed pictures of themselves during certain trials and same-gender strangers during others, intermixed between valenced words. Participants internally-rehearsed the words “I am” or “He/she is” when presented with the respective pictures and read the valenced words, thereby associating the self/other with positivity/negativity on different trials. Participants self-monitored their affective response, and their degree of attention and/or rate of internal speech/reading speed was measured indirectly via button-press response time (RT). Results in 91 young adults demonstrated a self-positivity bias in survey ratings, stronger affective responses during SRP than ORP, slower RT during SRP than ORP, and slower RT during positive than negative valence. Difference scores between SRP of negative- vs. positive-valence trials, and between SRP vs. ORP of negative-valence trials, were correlated among survey ratings, affective responses, and RT. Finally, content analyses of phenomenological reports showed that task conditions differentially provoked a number of socioemotional experiences during both SRP and ORP (e.g., jealousy-envy, sympathy-pity, good will/pride). We discuss potential applications of the task in the study of personality and individual differences.     

The effects of exposure to slender and muscular images on male body dissatisfaction

This research examined the effects of appearance-based comparisons to muscular and slender idealized male bodies and the contribution of internalization and social comparison to change in body dissatisfaction. Participants were 111 male undergraduates who completed measures of body dissatisfaction, internalization, and social comparison and viewed images of either muscular or slender men in advertisements or product-only advertisements. Results indicated that exposure to both muscular and slender images was associated with an increase in body dissatisfaction, with no significant differences in the change in body dissatisfaction between the two image conditions. Internalization and trait social comparison were each associated with an increase in body dissatisfaction; however, upward social comparison was only a significant predictor of a change in body dissatisfaction for the males who viewed muscular images. These results highlight the impact of slender models on young men's body dissatisfaction and support the examination of media literacy interventions with this population.     

谈钱还是谈情:企业如何引导消费者分享自媒体营销

社交网络的发展弱化了传统媒体的影响力,强化了消费者的影响力;在这种情况下,企业需要思考如何借助消费者传播营销信息,以影响其他消费者。本文从企业如何设计营销信息入手,探究消费者与企业所处的关系范式对消费者信息转发行为的影响。通过二手数据分析与实验法,本文得出如下结论:经济类刺激对触发交易关系范式下消费者的转发行为更有效;情感类刺激对触发共有关系范式下消费者的转发行为更有效;交易关系范式下消费者出于回报企业的动机分享,共有关系范式下消费者出于利己动机而分享。     

How Viewers Process Live,Breaking, and Emotional Television News

This study experimentally tested the effects of negative emotional video and presentation style of television news stories on viewers' attention to, and memory for, the stories. News stories were selected that elicited either fear or disgust. Also, stories were presented either as “breaking” news, “live” news, or traditional news. Findings suggest that stories that elicited disgust reduced processing resources available at encoding more than stories that elicited fear, and were recognized less. A signal detection analysis was conducted that indicated higher sensitivity for fear stories than for disgust, but there was a conservative criterion bias shift for disgust stories. Presentation style had little impact on resources available at encoding and recognition memory, except that fewer resources were available at encoding shortly after the story was verbally labeled “live” or “breaking,” but that did not translate into differences in recognition memory. These results suggest that including disgust-eliciting images in television news stories hinders processing. These results also suggest that discrete emotional theory is applicable to the limited capacity model of mediated message processing.     

Liking the (Funny) Messenger: The Influence of News Parody Exposure,Mirth, and Predispositions on Media Trust

ABSTRACT

This article features a multi-study research effort (Study 1 N = 331; Study 2 N = 317) examining how predispositions toward a humor source and the perceived humor (i.e., mirth) of a related comedic message can, together, influence media trust-based expectations. Noting the revered status and cultural prominence of various news parody show hosts, this article proposes that feelings of favorability for a news parody humor source (for example, Jon Stewart or John Oliver) can translate into positive perceptions of the press upon exposure to news parody messages. Drawing from principles of the heuristic-systemic information processing model (HSM) and affective disposition theory, the study findings indicate that one’s affective disposition toward a news parody source can have an indirect effect on media trust, as mediated by a feeling of mirth. Upon conducting a test of moderated mediation, the effect is demonstrated to be conditioned by one’s news parody orientation. That is, affective disposition’s mediated effect is most pronounced among those who are least inclined to see news parody as a legitimate/appropriate source of news. Ultimately, this exploratory research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how news parody programming may influence perceptions of the news media as an institutional entity.     

Media Effects on Women's Body Esteem: Social and Individual Difference Factors

This study examined individual difference and social factors in moderating the effects of media images on women's body satisfaction. Participants heard a conversation wherein 2 people either were judgmental about a mutual friend's weight gain or discussed their friend's recent move. Participants then viewed slides which were either neutral or depicted "ideal" images of women. Results underscored the importance of individual differences. When exposed to ideal images, thinner women more positively evaluated their sexual attractiveness, while heavier women reported more negative self-evaluations. Compared to low self-monitors, high self-monitors who were exposed to ideal images were more positive about their physical condition. The findings demonstrate that media images do not similarly affect all women's body esteem.     

Mild Auditory-Visual Dissonance in Television News May Exceed Viewer Attentional Capacity

Two experiments examined how TV news viewers divide attention between the audio and video messages of news stories. The experiment tested the “belongingness” hypothesis which asserts that two distinct perceptual stimuli will be attended to as if they were a single stimulus when they appear to belong together. The experiments extended the belongingness hypothesis by manipulating semantic units (i.e., audio and video messages) rather than perceptual units. Auditory-visual redundancy was used to manipulate the belongingness variable. It was hypothesized that dissonant audio and video would be viewed as conveying two different messages, with the result that attentional capacity would be exceeded. Conversely, redundant stories would be viewed as conveying one message, with the results that attentional capacity would not be exceeded. Using secondary task methodology—reaction time tasks in Experiment 1 and memory preloads in Experiment 2—the belongingness hypothesis was supported.     

How Users Take Advantage of Different Forms of Interactivity on Online News Sites: Clicking,E‐Mailing,and Commenting

This study examines the uptake of multiple interactive features on news sites. It looks at the thematic composition of the most clicked, most e‐mailed, and most commented stories during periods of heightened and routine political activity. Results show that (a) during the former period, the most commented stories were more likely to be focused on political, economic, and international topics (or “public affairs” news) than the most clicked and most e‐mailed articles. (b) The 3 types of interactivity exhibited a greater presence of public affairs content during the period of heightened political activity than during its routine counterpart. (c) As the period of heightened political activity unfolded, consumers' propensity to click on, e‐mail, and comment about public affairs stories increased.     

The Role of Typical and Atypical Events in Story Memory

To understand how viewers or readers process and remember media narratives such as entertainment, news, and information is critical to our understanding of the mental processing of television and other media. Media stories contain both typical and atypical events and people, but little is known about how readers or viewers process and remember these two types of information. Participants in 2 experiments remembered atypical story items much better even a week later. However, the conservative way they treated atypical memories could give the illusion that typical items are better remembered than they really are. The results have implications for both mass media theory and theories of memory.     

An Attentional Goldilocks Effect: An Optimal Amount of Social Interactivity Promotes Word Learning From Video

Television can be a powerful education tool; however, content makers must understand the factors that engage attention and promote learning from screen media. Prior research has suggested that social engagement is critical for learning and that interactivity may enhance the educational quality of children’s media. The present study examined the effects of increasing the social interactivity of television on children’s visual attention and word learning. Three- to 5-year-old (M_age = 4;5, SD = 9 months) children completed a task in which they viewed videos of an actress teaching them the Swahili label for an on-screen image. Each child viewed these video clips in 4 conditions that parametrically manipulated social engagement and interactivity. We then tested whether each child had successfully learned the Swahili labels. Though 5-year-old children were able to learn words in all conditions, we found that there was an optimal level of social engagement that best supported learning for all participants, defined by engaging the child but not distracting from word labeling. Our eye-tracking data indicated that children in this condition spent more time looking at the target image and less time looking at the actress’s face as compared with the most interactive condition. These findings suggest that social interactivity is critical to engaging attention and promoting learning from screen media up until a certain point, after which social stimuli may draw attention away from target images and impair children’s word learning.     

How Body Feedback Influences Consumers’ Evaluation of Products

Two experiments explored the effect of unobtrusively induced expressions of approach and avoidance on consumers’ evaluation of well‐known products. In Study 1, valenced objects were presented moving horizontally or vertically on a screen, thereby inducing either head shaking or head nodding. Objects were also presented without movement. Induced nodding led to more favorable evaluations of positively valenced products but did not affect the evaluation of negatively valenced ones. Similarly, head shaking led to more unfavorable evaluations of negatively valenced products but did not affect the evaluation of positive ones. In Study 2, participants evaluated positively valenced products more favorably when they flexed their arms while making the evaluation and evaluated negatively valenced products more unfavorably when they extended their arms during evaluation. However, arm flexion had no effect on evaluations of negative products, and arm extensions had no effect on evaluations of positive ones. Participants’ willingness to buy the products followed a similar pattern. The theoretical implications and the applications of these body feedback effects are discussed.     

GI Joe or Average Joe? The impact of average-size and muscular male fashion models on men's and women's body image and advertisement effectiveness

Increasing body size and shape diversity in media imagery may promote positive body image. While research has largely focused on female models and women's body image, men may also be affected by unrealistic images. We examined the impact of average-size and muscular male fashion models on men's and women's body image and perceived advertisement effectiveness. A sample of 330 men and 289 women viewed one of four advertisement conditions: no models, muscular, average-slim or average-large models. Men and women rated average-size models as equally effective in advertisements as muscular models. For men, exposure to average-size models was associated with more positive body image in comparison to viewing no models, but no difference was found in comparison to muscular models. Similar results were found for women. Internalisation of beauty ideals did not moderate these effects. These findings suggest that average-size male models can promote positive body image and appeal to consumers.     

The effects of trait and state anxiety on attention to emotional images: An eye-tracking study

Attentional biases for threatening stimuli have been implicated in the development of anxiety disorders. However, little is known about the relative influences of trait and state anxiety on attentional biases. This study examined the effects of trait and state anxiety on attention to emotional images. Low, mid, and high trait anxious participants completed two trial blocks of an eye-tracking task. Participants viewed image pairs consisting of one emotional (threatening or positive) and one neutral image while their eye movements were recorded. Between trial blocks, participants underwent an anxiety induction. Primary analyses examined the effects of trait and state anxiety on the proportion of viewing time on emotional versus neutral images. State anxiety was associated with increased attention to threatening images for participants, regardless of trait anxiety. Furthermore, when in a state of anxiety, relative to a baseline condition, durations of initial gaze and average fixation were longer on threat versus neutral images. These findings were specific to the threatening images; no anxiety-related differences in attention were found with the positive images. The implications of these results for future research, models of anxiety-related information processing, and clinical interventions for anxiety are discussed.     

Relating social skills and social media use to consumer behavior: An investigation across the autism spectrum

In this study, we focus on the role of social functioning on consumer behavior, exploring social media use as a mediating factor. In order to facilitate our identification of social functioning competence as a factor, we increased the range by including a subgroup of respondents who identified themselves as being on the autism spectrum. Indeed, this group stood out as having difficulties in getting along with persons they interact with at school, at work and at home. We used these measures to define an individual differences index of social functioning that we call Quality of Social Functioning (QoSF). In a preliminary report, we showed that this index was predictive of social media use and its influence, with those scoring higher reacting more favorably and utilizing more of its features. In the main study, we focused on the content of social media posts by providing photos of posts that depicted either group activities or individual activities. Those scoring lower on our index gave lower ratings of posts in general, but especially for those posts depicting group activities. Results are discussed in terms of the important role of social functioning in the use of social media and its content as a vehicle for informing consumer behavior. We describe how the results of our study and related studies can be used by marketers to improve the lives of especially vulnerable consumers.     

Examining the influence of anecdotal stories and the interplay of individual differences on reasoning

In two experiments, we explored whether anecdotal stories influenced how individuals reasoned when evaluating scientific news articles. We additionally considered the role of education level and thinking dispositions on reasoning. Participants evaluated eight scientific news articles that drew questionable interpretations from the evidence. Overall, anecdotal stories decreased the ability to reason scientifically even when controlling for education level and thinking dispositions. Additionally, we found that article length was related to participants' ratings of the news articles. Our study demonstrates that anecdotes can discourage scientific reasoning while also pointing to the potential influence of article length on judgements of quality.