A Psychophysiological Study of Processing HIV/AIDS Public Service Announcements: The Effects of Novelty Appeals, Sexual Appeals, Narrative Versus Statistical Evidence, and Viewer’s Sex

Abstract

This study used self-reports and physiological measures-heart rate (HR) and skin conductance level (SCL)-to examine the effects of novelty appeals, sexual appeals, narrative versus statistical evidence, and viewer's sex on cognitive and emotional processing of HIV/AIDS public service announcements (PSAs) among heterosexually active single college students. Novelty or sexual appeals differently affected self-reported attention and cognitive effort as measured by HR. High- rather than low-novelty HIV/AIDS PSAs, perceived as more attention-eliciting, did not lead to more cognitive effort. High- rather than low-sex HIV/AIDS PSAs, not perceived as more attention-eliciting, led to more cognitive effort as reflected by greater HR deceleration. Novelty or sexual appeals also affected self-reported emotional arousal and SCL differently. HIV/AIDS PSAs with high rather than low levels of novelty or sexual appeals led to greater self-reported arousal, but not greater SCL. Message evidence interacted with message appeals to affect cognitive effort. Participants exerted greater cognitive effort during high- rather than low-novelty narrative HIV/AIDS PSAs, and during low- rather than high-novelty statistical ones. The advantage of high over low sexual appeals was more obvious in statistical than in narrative HIV/AIDS PSAs. Males reported greater emotional arousal than females during high- rather than low-sex HIV/AIDS PSAs.

Web-Based Behavioral Intervention Utilizing Narrative Persuasion for HIV Prevention Among Chinese Men Who Have Sex With Men (HeHe Talks Project): Intervention Development

“…Several studies [36][37][38][39][40][41] have applied narrative communication to HIV prevention, but there are some critical research gaps. First, most narratives took the form of fictional stories (eg, entertainment-education soap opera) that were scripted by researchers; its efficacy in improving HIV-preventive behaviors is controversial [36,37].…”

“…Second, some interventions involved multiple behavior change strategies (eg, condom distribution), and thus, made it difficult to isolate the specific effect of the narrative component [ 38 ]. Third, the majority of previous narrative interventions addressed heterosexual risk for HIV [ 39 , 40 ]; we suppose that efficacy of narrative interventions is higher among homosexual people because HIV prevention is more personally relevant to this population group, and personal relevance of a health topic can enhance narrative efficacy [ 41 ]. Finally, no studies have been conducted among Asian populations.…”

Narrative Styles and Narratology Formats in PSAs: Assessing the Effects on Arousal, Attention, and Memory

“…Using heart rate to indicate orienting responses as a measure of tonic cognitive effect and using skin conductance as a measure of arousal has included dozens of studies since the 2000s (e.g., Grabe, Zhou, Lang, & Bolls, 2000;Lang, Zhou, Schwartz, Bolls, & Potter, 2000). While these studies have analyzed television and PSAs (e.g., Lang 1990;Modica et al, 2018;Wang & Lang, 2012;Zhang, et al, 2016), websites (e.g., Kallinen & Ravaja, 2007), still photographs (e.g., Codispoti, Ferrari, & Bradley, 2006), audio (e.g., Bolls, Lang, & Potter, 2001), and video games (e.g., Lissak, 2018;Schneider, Lang, Shin, & Bradley, 2004) in relation to ways media are produced (e.g., Lang, Chung, Lee, Schwartz, & Shin, 2005;Lang et al, 2000), incorporate audio (Dillman Carpentier, & Potter, 2007), use animation (Lang, Borse, Wise, & David, 2002), include textual warnings (e.g., Lang, Borse, Wise, & David, 2002), and other related variables, studies using psychophysiological methods to analyze reactions to PSAs narrative formats while considering POV are not noted, although a similar concept has been considered for POV effects of video games (Schneider et al, 2004).…”

Transmission creep

“…Scholars have identified responses to negative political advertising (Bradley, Angelini, and Lee 2007), HIV/AIDS public service announcements (Zhang et al 2015), and entertainment programming (Rubenking and Lang 2014), among other stimuli. Here, too, there has been little pick-up among scholars focused on journalists or journalism, again with some exceptions (see Lynch and McGoldrick 2015;Soroka and McAdams 2015).…”