| For decades now, entertainment media have been created to leverage the power of storytelling for raising social consciousness, disseminating accurate information, and facilitating positive change through the use of entertainment-education communication strategy. This dissertation extends previous research by complementing self reports with a direct and noninvasive method of human electrophysiology, the event-related potential (ERP) technique that generates the N1 and P2 waves of brain activity, to examine the attentional allocation and cognitive processing of educational messages about intimate partner violence in a popular television program. Based on the general learning model and the limited capacity model of attention, results of the experiment suggested: (1) message stimulation had a significant influence on attentional allocation with more attention paid to arousing messages than to neutral messages; (2) individual differences in sensation seeking significantly moderated the relationship between message stimulation and attentional allocation, with high sensation seekers paying more attention to arousing messages and low sensation seekers paying more attention to neutral messages; and (3) enhanced brain activity in response to arousing messages, on one occasion, significantly predicted behavioral intention to avoid intimate partner violence. These findings partially support the brain-as-predictor approach in media neuroscience and provide useful insights for designing effective entertainment-education programs. |
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