NEWHAGEN AND REEVES: INFLUENCE OF EMOTION ON COG/ INFLUENCE OF EMOTION ON COG: RESEARCH METHOD: TRUE EXPERIMENT

what was the aim?

to investiagte whether visual images shown on TV, which arouse negative emotion, effect ability to recall news events

what was the sample?

56 stanford undergraduates

what was the method?

true experiment

what was the procedure?

-participants had to watch either 4 news broadcasts with negative imagery or 4 broadcasts without

-there was a version of each of the 8 news events with negative emotional images and 8 without

-for each story, half of participants were randomly allocated to watch events with negative images and half watched events without negative images (information only)

-they were then asked to watch a video clip and press a button as quickly as possible to identify whether the clip was part of the broadcast they'd just watched

- a follow-up questionnaire of the news stories followed 6-7 weeks later

what were the findings?

-information presented before negative images was recalled worse

-information presented after negative images was recalled better

-6 months later, factual information was recalled better in the no emotive images condition. however, the images themselves were recalled vividly and accurately

what was the conclusion?

suggests that shocking visual imagery seen on TV news stories is important in the formation of flashbulb memories