Effects of Substance Cues in Negative Public Service Announcements on Cognitive Processing

Abstract

This study examined how the presence of substance cues interacted with arousing content level in public service announcements (PSAs) to affect human motivational activation, and as a result, affect cognitive information processing. A 2 (arousing content level: high vs. low arousing content fear appeal PSAs) × 2 (substance cue: absence vs. presence) × 4 (repetition) within-subject factorial design experiment was conducted. Overall, the results indicated that the presence of substance cues in high arousing content fear appeal messages elicited defensive processing, yielding poor audio recognition memory sensitivity and a more conservative criterion bias. However, the addition of substance cues to low arousing content fear appeal messages increased audio recognition sensitivity. The presence of substance cues decreased visual recognition regardless of the arousing content level. Implications and future research are discussed.

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