Paul D. Bolls

Enjoyment of Advergames and Brand Attitudes: The Impact of Thematic Relevance

ABSTRACT Campaigns increasingly implement advergames to engage consumers with a brand through interactive, entertaining media content. However, little research tests the effects of specific features of advergames on desired advertising outcomes. This article reports the results of an experiment designed to examine how variation in the thematic connection between the game associated with an advergame and the brand affects the relationship between attitude toward the game (equated with attitude toward the ad) and attitude toward the brand. The analysis reveals a stronger positive relationship between attitude toward the advergame and attitude toward the brand when participants play games with a high thematic connection to the brand’s product. Therefore, designing advergames that relate thematically to the product of the sponsoring brand should increase the likelihood of positive conditioning of brand attitudes evoked by playing an advergame.

Packaging Television News: The Effects of Tabloid on Information Processing and Evaluative Responses

This experiment assessed the impact of formal features associated with the packaging of tabloid and standard news on viewer arousal, attention, information recognition, memory, and evaluations of news. The flamboyant tabloid packaging style increased arousal and attention but did not have a significant impact on recognition memory or delayed free recall of information. Moreover, viewers found standard versions to be more believable and informative than the tabloid versions of news stories.

How Avatar Customizability Affects Children's Arousal and Subjective Presence During Junk Food–Sponsored Online Video Games

The purpose of this study was to determine how children cognitively and emotionally process interactive marketing of snack food products in advergames. Children (N = 30) aged 10 to 12 were asked to play advergames with (a) avatars that were assigned to them, (b) avatars chosen from a pool, and (c) self-designed avatars. The childrens skin conductance levels were collected during play. After gameplay, at each customization level, self-reported presence was collected. The results of this study indicate that customization of game avatars can affect both subjective feelings of presence and psychophysiological indicators of emotion during gameplay, which may make the gameplay experience more enjoyable. This may have implications for game sponsors and producers. Self-reported presence had no effect on psychophysiological indicators of emotion during gameplay. Implications of this finding and limitations of this study are discussed.

Scare' Em or Disgust 'Em: The Effects of Graphic Health Promotion Messages

This study experimentally tested the effects of 2 types of content commonly found in anti-tobacco television messages—content focused on communicating a health threat about tobacco use (fear) and content containing disgust-related images—on how viewers processed these messages. In a 2 × 2 within-subjects experiment, participants watched anti-tobacco television ads that varied in the amount of fear and disgust content. The results of this study suggest that both fear and disgust content in anti-tobacco television ads have significant effects on resources allocated to encoding the messages and on recognition memory. Heart-rate data indicated that putting fear- or disgust-related content into anti-tobacco ads led to more resources allocated to encoding compared to messages without either feature. However, participants appeared to allocate fewer resources to encoding during exposure to messages featuring both fear and disgust content. Recognition was most accurate for messages that had either fear or disgust content but was significantly impaired when these 2 message attributes occurred together. The results are discussed in the context of motivated processing and recommendations about message construction are offered to campaign designers.

Cognitive Access to Negatively Arousing News: An Experimental Investigation of the Knowledge Gap

Over the past 30 years, survey researchers have documented the existence of a knowledge gap and expressed concern that people with little education are falling behind because they do not acquire the information necessary to participate in socioeconomic spheres. This study is the first to offer (a) experimental evidence for the existence of the knowledge gap and (b) explanations for it in terms of varying levels of information processing capacities, or cognitive access. Participants from higher and lower educational backgrounds paid equal levels of attention to television news stories, but they did not display the same recognition memory for facts. Moreover, participants in the higher education group were physiologically more aroused by news than those in the lower education group. These findings do not pinpoint whether cognitive access is learned or innate, but they do suggest that the biological systems of people from higher educational backgrounds are particularly alert in preparing for information processing.

Motivated Processing of Fear Appeal and Disgust Images in Televised Anti-Tobacco Ads

The current study experimentally tested the effects of two types of content commonly found in anti-tobacco television messages – content focused on communicating a health threat about tobacco use (fear) and content containing disgust related images – on how viewers processed these messages. In a 2 × 2 within-subjects experiment, participants watched anti-tobacco television ads that varied in the amount of fear and disgust content. The results of this study suggest that both fear and disgust content in anti-tobacco television ads have significant effects on resources allocated to encoding the messages, on recognition memory, and on emotional responses. Most interesting, although messages high in both fear and disgust content were rated the most unpleasant and arousing, these same messages reduced corrugator responses, accelerated heart rate, and worsened recognition memory. Implications for the study of motivated processing and for the construction of anti-tobacco messages are discussed.

I Can Hear You, but Can I See You? The Use of Visual Cognition During Exposure to High-Imagery Radio Advertisements

This study tested the proposition that high-imagery radio advertisements engage visual cognitive resources. Participants in a within-subjects experiment were exposed to 60-second radio advertisements previously coded as either high- or low-imagery ads. During half of the ads, participants were also presented a series of pictures unrelated to the content of the ads. Dual-task interference between the cognitive tasks of listening to the radio advertisements and viewing the unrelated pictures was found in recognition data for high-imagery ads but not low-imagery ads. This pattern of results indicates listening to high-imagery radio ads competes with visual tasks for cognitive resources. Therefore, it appears listening to high-imagery radio advertisements engages visual cognitive resources despite the fact these advertisements are auditory messages. Implications for theories of communication-evoked mental imagery are discussed.

Effects of Emotional Tone and Visual Complexity on Processing Health Information in Prescription Drug Advertising

This experiment explored how the emotional tone and visual complexity of direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertisements affect the encoding and storage of specific risk and benefit statements about each of the drugs in question. Results are interpreted under the limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing framework. Findings suggest that DTC drug ads should be pleasantly toned and high in visual complexity in order to maximize encoding and storage of risk and benefit information.

When Words Collide Online: How Writing Style and Video Intensity Affect Cognitive Processing of Online News

This experiment explored how the writing style of online news, defined as inverted pyramid versus narrative, affects the cognitive processing of accompanying video clips. Forty seven participants read 4 online news stories and viewed the accompanying video clips. Results suggested that reading inverted pyramid stories may require allocation of more cognitive resources to encoding a related video clip. Recognition for story details was more accurate for stories in narrative than inverted pyramid style. Results are discussed in terms of a distinction between cognitive processing involved in “getting there” versus “being there” during exposure to online news.

Embodiment of Narrative Engagement

Abstract. This study investigated the validity of the narrative engagement scale (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009) by grounding the dimensions of the scale in relationships between self-reported narrative engagement and embodied mental processes occurring during exposure. Psychophysiological measures were used to observe real-time variation in mental processes activated when individuals viewed narrative content that was manipulated in two fundamental content characteristics: cohesion and emotional content. The results of a 2 (low vs. high cohesion) × 2 (low vs. high emotional content) × 3 (video clips) mixed model repeated measures experiment showed consistent influences of cohesion and emotional content on self-reported narrative engagement as well as psychophysiological indicators (heart rate, skin conductance, corrugator activity). Confirming the hypotheses, self-reported attentional focus was related to lower levels of heart rate, while self-reported emotional engagement was positively related to corrugato...