Original Article Motivated Processing of Fear Appeal and Disgust Images in Televised Anti-Tobacco Ads Glenn Leshner, Paul Bolls, and Kevin Wise Strategic Communication Department, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA Abstract. The current study experimentally tested the effects of two types of content commonly found in anti-tobacco television messages – content focused on communicating a health threat about tobacco use (fear) and content containing disgust related images – on how viewers processed these messages. In a 2 · 2 within-subjects experiment, participants watched anti-tobacco television ads that varied in the amount of fear and disgust content. The results of this study suggest that both fear and disgust content in anti-tobacco television ads have significant effects on resources allocated to encoding the messages, on recognition memory, and on emotional responses. Most interesting, although messages high in both fear and disgust content were rated the most unpleasant and arousing, these same messages reduced corrugator responses, accelerated heart rate, and worsened recognition memory. Implications for the study of motivated processing and for the construction of anti-tobacco messages are discussed. Keywords: defensive responding, disgust, fear appeals, motivated processing Introduction The interaction of emotion and cognition in processing med- iated messages is a dynamic and complex phenomenon. Mediated messages are packed with content that varies widely in the presence of emotionally powerful stimuli that might motivate individuals to process the message in distinct ways. This experiment was designed to advance theory by exploring how different combinations of fear appeal and disgust-related images engage cognitive and emotional processing during exposure to televised anti-tobacco ads. Fear appeal, message content focused on communicating a threat, is a common message strategy in health campaigns. While extensive research has explored the impact of fear- based health messages on persuasion (see de Hoog, Stroebe, & de Wit, 2007, for a recent review), there are still signifi- cant gaps in understanding how individuals process such messages. Further, fear appeals are extremely complex mes- sages, often with multiple emotional characteristics (Dillard & Nabi, 2006; Dillard & Peck, 2001; Dillard, Plotnick, Godbold, Freimuth, & Edgar, 1996). Two such characteris- tics are audiovisual information about a threat to one’s health and negative graphic images (e.g., tobacco-damaged organs, body bags). While message producers may think that the combination of these characteristics intensifies per- ception of a significant health threat, they may not realize that the combination of distinct forms of emotional content might lead to nuances in cognitive/emotional processes that could impact the effectiveness of fear appeals. Wakefield and colleagues, in a review of antismoking ads, pointed out the degree to which fear appeals have been used to persuade individuals not to smoke, and called for more research on the impact of negative graphic images in these messages (Wakefield, Flay, Nichter, & Giovino, 2003). One form of negative graphic images in anti-tobacco ads are those likely to be perceived as gross or nauseating. We refer to these as disgust-related images. Fear appeal and disgust-related images could have significant interac- tions on the dynamics of cognitive/emotional processes engaged when individuals view messages that vary in the presence of both features. The specific goal of this experi- ment was to see how the presence of fear appeal and dis- gusting images, both uniquely and interactively, stimulate cognitive and emotional processing of message content. A major theoretical assumption made in this study is that human motivation drives both cognition and emotion. This assumption underlies what has become known as the moti- vated processing framework under which scholars consider specific patterns of motivational activation elicited by stim- uli to be the primary determinant of cognitive/emotional processing (Lang, 2006; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1997). Motivational activation consists of appetitive and aversive activation (Cacioppo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1997). Appetitive activation motivates individuals to approach or engage with stimuli, while aversive activation motivates withdrawal or defensive responding to stimuli (Cacioppo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1999). In general, pleasant stimuli evoke appetitive, and unpleasant stimuli elicit aver- sive activation (Bradley & Lang, 2000). Mediated messages depict all sorts of pleasant and unpleasant stimuli capable of evoking varying patterns of appetitive and aversive activa- tion, which in turn has been found to impact cognitive/ Ó 2011 Hogrefe Publishing Journal of Media Psychology 2011; Vol. 23(2):77–89 DOI: 10.1027/1864-1105/a000037