It's an Arousing, Fast-Paced Kind of World: The Effects of Age and Sensation Seeking on the Information Processing of Substance-Abuse PSAs

Experimental evaluation of antitobacco PSAs: Effects of message content and format on physiological and behavioral outcomes

“…These effects did not translate to effects on intentions to quit, which contrasts prior evidence that sensation-seeking adolescents have a stronger preference for high MSV antidrug PSAs ( Palmgreen et al, 1991 ) and are more likely to change behavior when viewing such PSAs than are individuals low on sensation seeking ( Everett & Palmgreen, 1995 ;Palmgreen et al, 2002Palmgreen et al, , 2007. However, high sensation seekers also exhibit less physiological arousal and greater recall than low sensation seekers when viewing antidrug PSAs ( Lang, Chung, Lee, Shin, & Schwartz 2005 ), illustrating the complexities in elucidating what makes a PSA effective. It is possible that the MSV manipulation in the present study was less salient than that used in prior research, in part because of the smoking cessation theme.…”

“…Research has demonstrated the utility of physiological responses in understanding message processing and recall ( Lang, Chung, Lee, Shin, & Schwartz 2005 ;Palmgreen et al, 2001 ). Physiological responses may be less informative in characterizing effective messages in an older, smoking population such as ours, than in younger subjects viewing illicit drug content media ( Lang, Chung, Lee, & Zhao, 2005 ;Palmgreen et al, 2001 ).…”

“…Skin conductance, reported in microSiemens, is a measure of sympathetic nervous system activity and has been used as a measure of arousal ( Lang, Chung, Lee, Shin, & Schwartz, 2005 ). For this measure, participants had their nondominant hand cleaned with distilled water, after which two disposable sensors were attached (EL-507, Biopac, Goleta, California), one each to the thenar and hypothenar eminence.…”

The Influence of Message and Audience Characteristics on TV News Grazing Behavior

“…SS tendencies have made a strong showing in media research over the past 20 years, with particular focus on action-packed or violent content (Hoffner & Levine, 2005;Krcmar & Greene, 1999;Nabi & Riddle, 2008), health risk messages (Donohew et al, 1994;Lang, Chung et al, 2005;Palmgreen & Donohew, 2010), and, recently, social media (Haridakis & Hanson, 2009). Given the industry emphasis on-as well as public and scholarly concerns about-sensationalized television news, the paucity of academic inquiry into SS as a mediator in news consumption is striking.…”

“…The resulting reliability for the sensation seeking index of the 29 items from the three remaining sub-scales was within the desired range (˛D .70). This index was used to identify high and low sensation seekers through a median split, as is typically done (e.g., Lang, Chung et al, 2005;Perse, 1996;Schierman & Rowland, 1985).…”