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Dissertation Information for Erik Bucy

NAME:
- Erik Bucy

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Journalism

SCHOOL:
- University of Maryland (USA) (1998)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: The emotional appropriateness heuristic: Viewer assessments of televised presidential reactions to compelling news events

Abstract: An experiment investigated the effects of televised presidential responses to compelling news events on memory, thought elaboration, appropriateness ratings, and secondary emotions they elicited in subjects. Images of emotionally compelling news events and emotion-laden televised presidential reactions were categorized according to their valence and arousal. Voting age subjects were shown a stimulus tape containing four news stories followed by televised reactions from President Clinton. At the end of each story-reaction sequence, subjects were asked to write down all thoughts and feelings that came to mind while watching the clips and rate the primary and secondary emotions they felt.

After a brief break, subjects were shown a second video tape with images from the stimulus tape and other images they had not seen. Latency to recognition times and accuracy scores were measured to assess image memory. Finally, subjects completed an exit questionnaire that tested memory for information in the narrative portion of the news stories and presidential reactions.

Analysis of the story-reaction sequences shows that viewers assess news events primarily for their valence and presidential reactions both for their valence and arousal. Regardless of story valence, negative presidential reactions that are negative and not intense are expected and deemed appropriate. Positive and intense reactions, on the other hand, tend to violate this expectation, prompting more thoughts and inappropriate evaluations while worsening recognition memory.

Together, these results suggest that subjects employed an emotional appropriateness heuristic to assess the story-response sequence. In the assessment process, an inappropriate response is defined as an emotional expectancy violation. If emotional expectations are not met, cognitive processing difficulty and thought elaboration increase, while the range of emotional experience broadens.

The significant findings for secondary emotions elicited by the statistical interaction between arousal and valence support the notion that the generation of certain secondary emotions may lie in the interactions of primitive emotional dimensions.

These results offer insight into the formation of certain secondary emotional states and explain a process by which citizens, irrespective of political knowledge, can accurately assess the performance of leaders in a mass democracy dependent upon media images for political information.

MPACT Scores for Erik Bucy

A = 0
C = 2
A+C = 2
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2010-10-07 14:15:17

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