"Feeling" Resistance: Exploring the Role of Emotionally Evocative Visuals in Inducing Inoculation

This study explores the role of emotionally evocative visuals in the inoculation process. 127 respondents supportive of medical experimentation with animals either received no inoculation message or were exposed to 1 of 4 versions of an inoculation video in which the identical audio was accompanied by visuals manipulated to evoke relatively high or low affect. All groups were subsequently exposed to an attack video message. Results indicated that the messages with visual affective consistency (i.e., either high or low affect associated with both the counterargument and refutation sections of the pretreatment) conferred greater resistance to a persuasive attack message than the messages with visual affective inconsistency. The implications of this research for both the role of emotion and the role of visuals in conferring resistance are discussed.

[1]  G. A. Miller,et al.  Book Review Nisbett, R. , & Ross, L.Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment.Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980. , 1982 .

[2]  Terry L. Childers,et al.  Conditions for a Picture-Superiority Effect on Consumer Memory , 1984 .

[3]  John E. Newhagen,et al.  The Evening's Bad News: Effects of Compelling Negative Television News Images on Memory , 1992 .

[4]  James Price Dillard,et al.  The Multiple Affective Outcomes of AIDS PSAs , 1996 .

[5]  Michael Pfau,et al.  An Inoculation Theory Explanation for the Effects of Corporate Issue/Advocacy Advertising Campaigns , 1995 .

[6]  Michael Pfau,et al.  The role and impact of affect in the process of resistance to persuasion , 2001 .

[7]  Michael D. Miller,et al.  THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VIOLATIONS OF EXPECTATIONS AND THE INDUCTION OF RESISTANCE TO PERSUASION , 1979 .

[8]  D. Rolandelli,et al.  Children and Television: The Visual Superiority Effect Reconsidered. , 1989 .

[9]  Michael Pfau,et al.  Role and Influence of Communication Modality in the Process of Resistance to Persuasion , 2000 .

[10]  W. Mcguire,et al.  The generality of immunity to persuasion produced by pre-exposure to weakened counterarguments. , 1961, Journal of abnormal and social psychology.

[11]  W. J. McGuier.  Persistence of the resistance to persuasion induced by various types of prior belief defenses. , 1962 .

[12]  F. dell’Isola,et al.  Validity of Laplace formula and dependence of surface tension on curvature in second gradient fluids , 1995 .

[13]  William J. McGuire,et al.  Resistance to persuasion conferred by active and passive prior refutation of the same and alternative counterarguments. , 1961 .

[14]  Paul Messaris,et al.  Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising , 1996 .

[15]  Michael Pfau,et al.  Attack Politics: Strategy and Defense , 1990 .

[16]  John Morgan,et al.  See What I Mean: An Introduction to Visual Communication , 1986 .

[17]  Michael Pfau,et al.  Use of inoculation to promote resistance to smoking initiation among adolescents , 1992 .

[18]  T. Grimes,et al.  Mild auditory-visual dissonance in television news may exceed viewer attentional capacity , 1991 .

[19]  M. Browne,et al.  Alternative Ways of Assessing Model Fit , 1992 .

[20]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Stalking the elusive "vividness" effect. , 1982 .

[21]  William O. Bearden,et al.  Testing predictions derived from inoculation theory and the effectiveness of self-disclosure communications strategies , 1995 .

[22]  D. Cicchetti.  Emotion and Adaptation , 1993 .

[23]  Stephen D. Reese.  Visual‐verbal redundancy effects on television news learning , 1984 .

[24]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[25]  David Novitz,et al.  Pictures and their use in communication , 1977 .

[26]  P. Lachenbruch.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) , 1989 .

[27]  Michael Pfau,et al.  Enriching the Inoculation Construct The Role of Critical Components in the Process of Resistance , 1997 .

[28]  Robin L. Nabi.  Anger, fear, uncertainty, and attitudes: a test of the cognitive-functional model , 2002 .

[29]  W. Mcguire,et al.  The relative efficacy of various types of prior belief-defense in producing immunity against persuasion. , 1961, Journal of abnormal and social psychology.

[30]  P. Bentler,et al.  Comparative fit indexes in structural models. , 1990, Psychological bulletin.

[31]  S. Chaiken.  The heuristic model of persuasion. , 1987 .

[32]  Michael Pfau,et al.  The Persistence of Inoculation in Conferring Resistance to Smoking Initiation among Adolescents: The Second Year. , 1994 .

[33]  L. Ross,et al.  Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment. , 1981 .

[34]  Michael Pfau,et al.  INOCULATION IN POLITICAL CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATION. , 1988 .

[35]  Michael Pfau.  The potential of inoculation in promoting resistance to the effectiveness of comparative advertising messages , 1992 .