Motivated message processing: How motivational activation influences resource allocation, encoding, and storage of TV messages

    Authors

    A. Lang; A. Sanders-Jackson; Z. Wang;B. Rubenking

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Med. Teach.

    Keywords

    Memory; Attention; Motivation; Emotion; Media; LIMITED CAPACITY MODEL; ATTENTION; EMOTION; VALENCE; AROUSAL; Psychology, Experimental; Psychology, Social

    Abstract

    This paper investigates differences in overtime processing of television messages with three types of emotional trajectories-those which begin neutral and become negative, begin neutral and become positive and begin neutral and become equally positive and negative. The limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing is used to predict how the type of emotional content influences real-time activation of the appetitive and aversive motivational systems which then alter concurrent and subsequent message processing. Results show that during the first time period, when motivational activation is low, more resources are allocated to coactive and positive compared to negative messages supporting the positivity offset hypothesis. In the middle time period, when activation is moderate, more resources are allocated to negative than to positive messages, supporting the negativity bias hypothesis. Further, the different patterns of motivational activation do result in different patterns of messages processing. During positive messages, encoding increases and storage decreases over time. During negative messages, encoding decreases and storage increases overtime. During coactive messages initial encoding and storage are high though both decrease slightly over time.

    Journal Title

    Motivation and Emotion

    Volume

    Motiv. Emot.

    Issue/Number

    3

    Publication Date

    1-1-2013

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    508

    Last Page

    517

    WOS Identifier

    37

    ISSN

    0146-7239

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