Psychological Processing of the Fantasy-Reality

Home , Fantasy (psychology), Media psychology

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSING OF THE FANTASY-REALITY

DISTINCTION IN VIDEO MEDIA

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Vanessa Vega, M.A. May, 2010

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/

This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/nx217jb7838

ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Byron Reeves, Primary Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Jeremy Bailenson

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Clifford Nass

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Daniel Schwartz

Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education

This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives.

iii Abstract

Media can seem more or less real. News shows pictures of actual events, feature films show pictures that are contrived, and all media offer content that can be taken as reality or fantasy depending on features of the media and beliefs viewers bring to the experience. Chapter 1 reviews features of the media and individual differences that interact to influence perceived realism of media. Chapter 2 describes two experiments that manipulate perceived realism in order to examine effects on emotion, cognitive effort and memory, employing psycho-physiological indices of arousal and cognitive effort. In both experiments, video clips were framed as “Real People” or “Actors,” reversing frames for half the participants while holding content constant. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 32) viewed 40 or 80 video clips and completed a recognition memory test 15 minutes after exposure. Video clips showing highly arousing content increased skin conductance levels when labeled “Real People” versus “Actors,” indicating increased motivation activation in response to stimuli with survival significance. Video clips labeled “Actors” decreased heart rate variability levels, indicating increased cognitive effort during processing. Participants showed increased recognition memory for audiovisual details in high arousal video clips labeled “Real People” versus “Actors.” In

Experiment 2, participants (N = 62) viewed the 80 video clips from Experiment 1. Video clips labeled “Real People” were rated as more involving, useful for survival, and typical than “Actors.” High arousal content was rated as more involving, useful, and atypical than low-arousal content. 24 hours after exposure, participants showed better free recall and recognition memory for audiovisual details in high arousal clips labeled “Real

People” versus “Actors.” In sum, framing highly arousing video content as “Real people” increased physiological arousal and memory for audiovisual details.

Chapter 3 discusses implications of perceived realism research for information consumers. Previous research has shown that people tend to believe what they perceive

(Gilbert, 1991), and to respond to media as though it were real life (Reeves & Nass,

1996). Given the prevalent role of media in daily environments, and the lack of institutional oversight to assure the veracity of mediated information, information consumers are responsible for having the skills and motivation to evaluate sources and credibility in order to avoid Reality Monitoring failures in both individual and cultural memory (e.g. Johnson, 2007). Media features that elicit automatic sensory encoding processes are more likely to produce vivid memories (e.g. Lang, 2009), which are likely to be attributed to veridical sources (Johnson, 2006) and used in informing beliefs and actions (Shrum, 2009). Media literacy generally aims to shift information consumers from habits of automatic to critical processing. Cognitive approaches to media literacy interventions may include: a) increasing awareness of media features that elicit automatic sensory encoding (e.g. arousing content, edits, large screens), and b) reminding media users to consider the constructed nature and representational aspects of media portrayals.

Focusing on elements of media construction offers a form of reappraisal which may interfere with automatic sensory encoding by increasing cognitive effort and reducing arousal responses to highly arousing content.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES...... viii

LIST OF FIGURES...... ix

CHAPTER

1. Introduction...... 1

1.1. Conceptualizing media realism 1.2. Factors that influence media realism perceptions 1.3. Media realism effects on emotion and memory 1.4. Methodological issues in media realism research.

2. Experimental Findings...... 56

2.1. Media Realism Effects on Emotion and Memory...... 56 2.1.1. Introduction 2.1.2. Methods 2.1.3. Results 2.1.4. Discussion

2.2. Media Realism Effects on Memory and Self-reported Typicality, Identification and Utility...... 86 2.2.1. Introduction 2.2.2. Methods 2.2.3. Results 2.2.4. Discussion

3. General Discussion & Conclusion...... 97

APPENDICES...... 109

REFERENCES ...... 119

LIST OF TABLES

1. Formal and content features found to influence media realism perceptions……….....7

2. Pre-testing stimuli: Self-reported valence, arousal and belief of labels……………...70

3. Descriptive statistics for Label (Real People) x Content (High, Low arousal) x

Stimulus Duration (40 clips, 80 clips) effects on self-reported arousal and

valence...... 74

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

1. Model of media realism determinants and effects………………………………….....4

2. Skin conductance responses to video clips labeled Real People vs. actors……….…76

3. RSA reactivity during viewing video clips labeled Real People vs. Actors…………79

4. Recognition memory for video clips labeled Real People vs. Actors (Exp 1)..……..80

5. Ratings of Typicality, Utility, Survival (Exp 2)……………………………………..95

viii

1. Introduction

Section 1.1 describes features of the psychological state of belief produced when media are perceived as “real.” Features of the message and individual differences interact to influence the perception of media as more or less real. Section 1.2 reviews individual differences and message factors shown to influence the perception of media realism.

Section 1.3 reviews research concerning media realism effects on emotion and memory, and hypothesized psycho-physiological mechanisms for these effects. Section 1.4 discusses methodological issues in perceived realism research.

1.1. Conceptualization of Media Realism

The most basic definition of perceived realism is the extent to which people respond to media as though it were “real life,” also described as the "illusion of non-mediation,"

(Lombard & Ditton, 1997). People often do not consider media as a constructed or limited representation of a referent in existential reality. Rather, people tend to respond to media as though it were the real life referent (Reeves & Nass, 1996). The first film audiences in 1903 experienced great fright and ducked under their seats when a bandit on the screen pointed his gun directly at them during Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train

Robbery. On the other hand, disbelief of media, or perceiving media as unreal, tends to involve detached critical analysis, attention to the representational aspects of the medium, and a lack of emotional response to the media (e.g. Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003).

Conceptualizing perceived realism of media has been the subject of explications in the field of communication since the late 1970s. Presence and Transportation have been shown to correlate positively with perceived realism of media, and are the most recent

1 terms used to describe the psychological state in which people respond to media as though it were “like real life,” (Green, 2004). Presence has been defined as “a psychological state in which virtual objects are experienced as actual objects in either sensory or non-sensory ways,” (Lee, 2004), and, “how well [virtual environments] induce a mental state in their users making them feel, act and react as they would in a corresponding real world setting,” (Whitton, 2003). Involvement is a key dimension of

Presence (Biocca, Burgoon, Harms, & Stoner, 2001; Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003; Witmer

& Singer, 1998). During high involvement, people are emotionally and cognitively engaged, and unaware of the mediated nature of the experience. During low involvement, people maintain a distant, analytical state and are conscious of the mediated nature of the experience (Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003). Both Presence and Transportation describe a psychological state in which people “lose access to some real world facts in favor of accepting the narrative world,” and may “experience strong emotions and motivations, even when they know the events in the story are not real,” (Green & Brock, 2000). Low levels of Transportation are indicated by increased message scrutiny and disbelief of narrative elements. In sum, emotional reactions to the narrative, a loss of access to information in the immediate real world environment, and low scrutiny of representational aspects define key features of the psychological state described by

Transportation (Green & Brock, 2000) and Presence (Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003).

The most recent review of the Communication literature on perceived realism, proposed that perceived realism can be conceptualized according to six dimensional constructs: Magic Window, Social Realism, Plausibility, Probability, Identity, and Utility

(Busselle & Greenberg 2000). Similar to Presence and Transportation, the Magic

Window perception describes the developmental stage during which children have not yet learned to differentiate between symbols and their referents, believing, for example, that whatever they see on TV does in fact exist inside the TV. Children often reach out to touch the television screen, holding the same expectations for television objects that they have for actual objects.

Individual’s expectations about reality are developed through direct and indirect

(vicarious) experience. Frequencies of environmental inputs (e.g. events and associations) and the salience of environmental inputs for self-relevant consequences inform mental models about reality. Mental models of reality then inform predictions about self relevant consequences. This research takes the perspective that predicting self-relevant consequences was one of the central problems that the brain evolved to solve, and that reality can be defined by self-relevant consequences. Consequences that have significance for survival are particularly self-relevant. Constructs associated with perceived realism in the communication literature can be reduced. Social Realism reflects the perceived Plausibility and Probability, or Typicality of events based on learned expectations. Identity reflects the extent to which learned expectations are based on media experiences. The Utility construct can be understood as the extent to which information is perceived as useful for predicting self-relevant consequences.

If Perceived realism, Presence and Transportation are accepted as referring to the same phenomena, factors shown to influence the psychological state in which media are perceived as real can be integrated into a cohesive model. Applying a transmission model approach (e.g. Shannon & Weaver, 1949), key dimensions of perceived realism proposed by Busselle and Greenberg (2000) and factors shown to influence Presence and

Transportation can be organized according to categories of Message and Receiver. As outlined in Figure 1, Message factors include formal features and content features that explicitly or implicitly signify the source of a message. Receiver factors include individual differences in experiences, expectations, cognitive resources, and motivations, which influence subjective perceptions of the message as more or less real. As shown in

Figure 1, a variety of message features and individual differences interact to influence the perception of media as more or less real.

Message Factors Influence Perception:  Explicit Labels: (real people vs. actors; documentary vs. drama; scripted/staged vs. unscripted; fantasy/fiction vs. non-fiction); Interventions that highlight unreality of the stimuli.  Implicit Cues: Formal & content features signaling genre Media: Camera, TV, script, Referent Stimuli (Table 1), expectation violation instigates critical painter, writer, programmer, imparts meaning processing (Atypicality); Vividness; Interactivity; photographer, actor, editor, simply by existing Motivational relevance may elicit automatic attention director, etc. processes that interfere with critical processing

Individual Factors Influence Perception:  Cognitive Resources available: Age, SES, NFC, Mentation: cognitive operations (indexed by vagal multidimensional thinking; imaginative capacity withdrawal, HR increase,  Experience s & Expectations: influence Plausibility, RSA decrease); contextual Probability and Typicality judgments (i.e. expectation memory of cognitive effort matching)  Motivations : Information seeking, entertainment, escapism, mood management Sensory Perception: indexed by vagal suppression (HR Awareness of Source considered decrease, RSA increase); mediation Motivation activation indexed by increased arousal (SNS Source not considered, increase), enhanced Illusion of (generally by default) encoding of perceptual detail media = real life non-mediation

Figure 1. Media Realism Determinants and Effects

Applying a transmission model, the term “unmediated” (e.g. Lombard & Ditton,

2000) becomes analogous to Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) notion of fidelity, the transmission of a signal with minimal distortion or loss in quality. Presence or perceived

4 realism refers to the perception of a media signal as equivalent to the referent signal. As suggested by Involvement theory (Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003), awareness of mediation between referents and their representations can reduce the authenticity or credibility of the message (distortion). However, if a media user is expressly motivated to engage in

“suspension of disbelief’ (e.g. narrative transportation), s/he can ignore the poor quality, or low fidelity of a signal, shifting awareness from the representation to the referent.

Mental representations of reality might be described in terms of proto-typical exemplars, informed by frequencies and weighted by relevance for survival. Perceived realism refers to a psychological state in which consequences implied by media are equated with consequences implied by the referent in the mental representation of the media user, producing equivalent emotional and cognitive responses. As discussed in

Baudrillard’s work, inaccurate media representations threaten to distort or replace prototypical understandings of self-relevant consequences in the real world, particularly in relationships between people and with nature. By increasing understanding of the psychological processes involved in perceiving media as reality or fantasy, this research aims to encourage more accurate representations of reality and more critical interpretations of media. Correctly identifying sources and evaluating source credibility will likely aid individuals in predicting self-relevant consequences (e.g. Johnson, 2007).

1.2. Factors influencing the perception of media realism

As illustrated in Figure 1, features of the message and individual differences interact to influence perceived realism of media. Formal features of the message pertain to vividness and interactivity. Content features pertain to genre and typicality. The

5 interpretation and impact of message features depends on individual differences in experiences, which inform expectations of the referent and the media, as well as available cognitive resources and abilities. Violation of expectations can increase awareness of the mediated (constructed) nature of the experience. Explicit cues indicating the dramatic

(unreal) status of the representation, as well as motivation to critically process the message can also increase awareness of the representational aspects of media.

1.2.1. Message Structure

Formal features associated with genres of reality and fictional video media are presented in Table 1. Formal features of television or film that indicate a lack of artifice

(i.e. shaky camera movement, poor sound or lighting) are frequently associated with reality or documentary media. Fictional media, on the other hand, are frequently associated with artificially perfected features indicating extensive manufacturing, (i.e. makeup, high quality sound effects, dramatic lighting, and smooth, dollied camera movement). Vividness and Interactivity (Steuer, 1990) describe structural features that increase the perception of media realism.1 Vividness refers to the sensorial richness of the environment, and Interactivity refers to the degree to which users can influence the form or content of the environment (Steuer, 1990). High-definition television and larger screen sizes have been shown to increase self-reported Presence (Bracken, 2005). Vividness and

Interactivity in virtual environments contribute to richer sensorial experiences that mimic the complexity of reality in the sense of: “really walking

1 Steuer (1990) uses Vividness and Interactivity to describe features that increase the sense of Telepresence. Lee (2004) argues Telepresence and Presence are basically the same. Theoretically, Telepresence differs from presence because it refers to the perception of being present in another physical location in the real world, while Presence has been used to refer to the perception of being present in a virtual world which doesn’t necessarily have a basis in any real world location.

Table 1. Formal and content features found to influence media realism perceptions Reality video clips Dramatic video clips Formal Features  Hand-held camera movement  Dollied camera movement, for example  Eye level camera angles moving upwards into high angles  Natural lighting & ambient sounds  "Hidden" or illogical camera angles, (why  Visible production equipment, (e.g. microphone, would a camera be there?) stage, artificial lighting)  Artificial lighting (especially in dark  Consistency of format and time period, i.e. scenes) pixilation in digital video or warbled tape lines in  High quality audio: background music, no VHS indicate degradation common in home video irrelevant ambient sounds. footage; spots, lines, blurriness, discoloration, overexposure indicate degraded 16mm and 8mm vintage formats; black and white film prior to the 1960s.

Content Features  The camera does not always catch the beginning of  Recognizable actors an action  Clothes, hair and makeup appear stylized.  Recognizable people and places from the real Period dramas lack vintage format cues, or world, (politicians, city signs, etc) the period is impossible to film, i.e.  Clothes, hair and makeup seem natural, un-stylized. Renaissance era.  Impossible or highly unlikely events captured in high quality film seem staged using special effects.

in the environment instead of push-button flying; increased field-of view in head mounted displays, real things in the environment to touch and feel (passive haptics); high graphics frame update rate; and low-end-to-end system latency,“ (Whitton, 2003).

Mcluhan (1964) distinguished hot and cool media in terms of audience participation, and also considered imagination to be a form of participation. Cool media are highly interactive. In support of a relationship between interactivity and presence, imagined scenes elicit stronger emotional responses than scenes portrayed in media, (Kalamas &

Gruber, 1998). Similarly, Klimmt and Vorderer (2003) suggest “media offerings that do not include powerful sensory input can compensate for their low immersive potential by inspiring their audience to activate and retrieve related information from their memories.”

In sum, media that increase audience participation by allowing audience members a role to project themselves into media content increase interactivity and Presence.

1.2.2. Message Content

Media realism perceptions can be influenced by explicit labels that frame the message as reality or fiction, (i.e. news emblem or labels that manipulate source). In addition, viewers judge the realness of media content based on how likely the events portrayed are to happen in real life. Plausibility and Probability describe how possible and likely content portrayed in media is to occur in the real world. Typicality is most similar to

Probability, but refers specifically to a mental exemplar or prototype that is used to judge the likelihood of an event. This likelihood is generally inferred from the frequency of similar events in the mental exemplar. Typicality judgments are based on people’s expectations of any given situation, and their expectations are informed by their experience (real and mediated) and knowledge in the domain of the situation. To the extent that media content matches users’ expectations, the content is perceived as realistic. However, if an individual has minimal experience with or knowledge about the situation, such as what it would be like inside a crashing plane, media content may seem highly realistic because the viewer has minimal expectations to violate. Furthermore, if the viewers’ expectations of a crashing plane are strongly informed by mediated experiences (watching movies about crashing planes), media content that matches these expectations is also likely to seem highly typical and realistic. Seemingly regardless of genre, content judged as Typical is also perceived as realistic (Shapiro & Chock, 2003).

In support of Typicality as a key dimension of media realism, individuals with prior

8 knowledge and/or experience related to the themes of a story showed greater transportation into the story, which also conformed to their expectations (Green, 2004).

Thus, if an individual has well-formed expectations of media content, the extent to which media confirm or violate those expectations seems to strongly influence the extent to which media content is perceived as realistic. Content perceived as highly Typical can also reflect cultural agreement between media users and message producers about the way events should be portrayed, reflecting a shared prototype, an agreement based in and reinforcing shared cultural experiences and concepts of mundane reality. Shapiro and

Chock (2003) found higher levels of perceived reality for news stories and soap operas about unfamiliar places, versus familiar places. Typicality moderated this relationship only for news stories, suggesting greater expectation matching and cultural agreement for foreign content in a news genre than a soap opera genre. Similarly, Slater (1990) found that fictional passages were more influential than non-fiction only for unfamiliar content.

1.2.3. Individual Differences

Many theorists have proposed that individuals are inclined to believe what they perceive by default (e.g. Gilbert, 1991). Furthermore, individuals tend to believe media are real (Reeves & Nass, 1996). Until about age three, children lack the cognitive skills to distinguish between media representations and existential reality; they must first develop the ability to comprehend symbols as different from the referents they represent, and then to evaluate veridicality in media representations. Individual differences involved in media realism perceptions include: information processing skills, knowledge and expectations, and motivations for using media. Media literacy promotes fluency with critically

9 interpreting media through developing skills of media analysis and active creation of media messages.

In the first stage of development, infants to children three years old make no distinction between media and existential reality. In this Magic Window phase, children believe “that television is a portal through which they can observe people and ongoing events,” (Busselle & Greenberg, 2000; Hawkins, 1977). Children younger than three tend to perceive symbolic representations as one and the same as their referents, as though there was “a non-existent boundary between television and the immediate perceptual environment” (Jaglom & Gardner, 1981). Prior to age three, children are in the preoperational stage. Drawn to perceptually salient features and limited by centration, children must develop the ability to simultaneously perceive the dual reality of symbolic representations and their referents. In a famous example, Flavell, Flavell, Green and

Korfmacher (1990) showed that children under age three tended to believe that the television set contained actual, tangible objects inside, and hence, the three-year olds tended to agree that if the television set were turned upside down, the bowl of popcorn shown on television would spill out. Between three and four years old, children learn that television images do not behave like ordinary objects. Around age four, children realize

TV images represent an absent reality; they are able to verbally distinguish between referent and symbolic objects and able to hold different expectations for symbolic objects as opposed to referent objects, (Flavell, Flavell, Green, & Korfmacher, 1990). As children’s media exposure during early development has greatly increased since the

1990’s, and increasingly available digital cameras and home video devices blur the line between existential reality and symbolic representation, it seems possible if not likely that

10 children today may learn the representational nature of media at even younger ages.

Troseth (2003) shows that experience can accelerate children’s understanding of mediated reality and their use of symbols. After seeing themselves “live” on television for two weeks, two-year-old children reliably used a live video presentation of an adult hiding a toy in an adjoining room to find the toy. These children were also able to transfer what they learned to an identical task involving pictures. Lack of opportunities for learning about the representational nature of media can also delay development of media realism perceptions. Four-year-old children from low socio-economic environments in the Netherlands believed that Sesame Street was a real place and that people could communicate with the program’s characters by, for example, tapping on the side of the television (Nikken & Peeters, 1988).

Between age 5 and 11, children learn to differentiate between factual and fictional content in the symbolic world. Between age 5 and 7, children are more likely to misattribute fictional sources for factual sources or not consider the factuality of the source at all. Vocabulary scores predicted accurately identifying factuality and fictional content as scripted and rehearsed with actors who do not occupy the same roles in real life (Wright, Huston, Reitz, & Piemyat, 1994). By age eight, most children understand factual content on television (e.g. news and documentaries) represents events and people that exist in the real world, while fictional content does not (Condry & Freund, 1989;

Dorr, 1985; Hawkins, 1977, Dorr, 1983 #107; Potter, 1988; Wright, Kunkel, Pinon, &

Huston, 1989). Children distinguish the factuality of television programs sometimes on the basis of content (e.g., physically impossible events), but more often use formulaic production characteristics (Huston & Wright, 1983). In a study by Condry & Freund

(1989), children in second, fourth, and sixth grades were shown forty clips representing a variety of television content. The clips used production features characteristic of their respective genres, (i.e. drama featured high-quality sound and close-ups). Experimenters asked each child whether or not each clip was real (i.e., true and not pretend). Second- graders accurately judged the fictional status of programs containing animation, puppets, or impossible feats, as well as the real status of news and documentaries, but they were less accurate about realistic fiction and situation comedies. Wright, Huston, Reitz, and

Piemyat (1994) replicated these findings and describe children’s understanding of television as a set of schemata in which genre is the organizer: “[they] recognize form and content markers for a particular genre, then acquire an understanding about…the likely factuality and social realism of its content.”

Beyond age 11, children begin to consider the “probability” that symbolic content represents people and events similar to those in the real world (Dorr, 1983). This understanding is analogous to Social Realism, defined by Busselle and Greenberg (2000) as “the extent to which television content, whether real or fictional, is similar to life in the real world.” Social Realism judgments are a function of the Plausibility and Probability that events depicted in television content could or would happen in the viewer’s conception of real life. The understanding of Social Realism roughly coincides with

Piaget’s stage of formal operations and the capacity for abstract thought, and marks a mature understanding of media realism that persists throughout adulthood. As discussed above, media users’ knowledge and expectations inform judgments of the Typicality of content portrayed in media. Theorists have conceptualized dimensions to assess viewers’ expectations of what constitutes real life. Hawkins’ (1977) Social Expectation (SE)

12 dimension represents the degree to which “TV characters and events did or did not match children’s’ expectations about the world,” and “the degree to which people and events on television are similar to those in the real world.” According to Hawkins, the SE dimension relies on higher cognitive skills (e.g. judgments of possibility or probability), and use of this dimension increases with age. Multidimensional thinking is necessary engage in source discounting of fictional content (Cantor & Wilson, 1984; Mares, 1996).

An additional construct that articulates expectations about media portrayals is

Superficiality, which accounts for viewers’ evaluations of inappropriateness in storytelling and/or program production quality, (Elliott, Rudd & Good, 1983; cited in

Busselle & Greenberg, 2000). Examples of Superficiality include, “The feelings portrayed by the actors in this program are too shallow and one-dimensional for the characters to seem real” or “Frequently, this particular program treats unimportant matters much too seriously,” (Elliott et al., 1983). In sum, the Social Realism dimension is a function of Plausibility, Probability and Typicality, and reflects a summary judgment of the extent to which media portrayals accurately represent referent content based on viewers’ expectations and experiences.

Viewers’ experiences (both mediated and real) form the prototypical mental representations and expectations to which media are compared; however, human experience is increasingly based in media experiences as opposed to existential reality.

The Identity dimension of perceived realism (Busselle & Greenberg, 2000) represents the extent to which viewers incorporate media content into their real lives and/or involve themselves with media content. Potter (1988) suggested Identity might be operationalized as the number of times a person thinks or talks about a character, or the extent to which a

13 viewer thinks of a character as a close friend. Such interactions describe the basis for viewers’ parasocial relationships with media figures, which are interpersonal relationships that feel real because of the presence of a media figure in an individual’s life, but which are not based on any real live interactions. The belief that media is like the real world correlates with frequent exposure to media (e.g. Rubin, 1983), and is likely compounded by the lack of real world experience and reality-testing of information presented by media. For viewers whose primary life activity consists of watching television, television seems increasingly like the real world because the real world consists mostly of television. Media informs mental models of reality, such that expectations about reality are based on media inputs, (i.e. the indirect experience of

“reality” provided by media. The danger of losing sight of existential reality in favor of media reality is exemplified in the documentary film Second Skin (2009), which chronicles heavy video gamers’ tendencies to neglect social relationships, hygiene, and financial responsibilities in real life. Throughout the film, the desire to exist within a video game “reality” is undermined most critically when survival in existential reality is jeopardized. The “addicted” gamers’ tendency to replace existential reality in favor of the

“video game reality” is challenged most critically by the necessity of hygiene, social relationships and financial resources for survival in existential reality, and the game.

Individual differences in imaginative capacity may also influence judgments about how

“real” media seem (Wild, Kuiken, & Schopflocher, 1995). For example, a group of highly imaginative 5-year-olds was found to believe in the possibility of fantasy events becoming real by pretending more (Dierker, Davis, & Sanders, 1995).

Busselle and Greenberg (2000) define Utility as the extent to which information or events observed on television are useful to the viewer in real life. Media content, both fictional and factual, can serve needs to understand or learn about oneself, others, and one’s relationship with one’s environment (McQuail, Blumler, & Brown, 1972; Perse &

Courtright, 1993). If expressly motivated to obtain emotional gratifications or to fulfill information seeking motives, viewers may be expressly motivated to believe media portrayals and may intentionally process symbolic content as though it were referent. In a sample of over ten thousand people, Reiss and Wiltz (2004) examined various motives for watching reality television in terms of various positive emotional gratifications, or

“joys” obtained. The most significant motive for watching reality television was the need for social status, which leads to the joy of self-importance. The second most important motive of vengeance led to the joy of vindication. According to Reiss, people "enjoy feeling superior to the people being portrayed....people with a strong need for vengeance have the potential to enjoy watching people being humiliated,” (Jaffe, 2005). Viewing for instructional versus entertainment purposes has also been associated with higher levels of perceived realism (Rubin, 1981).

Children must develop the ability to interpret the veridicality of symbols, and even after these cognitive abilities are developed, adult viewers generally tend to respond to media content as though the content represented real life (Reeves & Nass, 1996; Shapiro

& Lang, 1991). Unless special circumstances inhibit the tendency to be transported into or present in the world of media narratives, the emotional consequences of media narratives occur (Gerrig & Pillow, 1998). Yet, reminding the viewer of the mediated nature of the experience (e.g. bad acting, a crying baby in the theatre) can interrupt even

15 the most adamant intentions to experience the simulation. In sum, maintaining awareness of the mediated nature of media experiences requires viewers to have cognitive resources available to discount the message, and motivation to maintain detachment. If processing media with a detached stance requires cognitive effort, it will likely produce a contextual experience that is bound and encoded with message content, potentially interfering with sensory perception and encoding of sensory information in the message, and increasing the likelihood that the message source is later recalled (e.g. Mitchell & Johnson, 2000).

1.3. Media realism effects on emotion and memory

Theories of Transportation, perceived realism and presence suggest media perceived as real produce emotional responses equivalent to those expected in a corresponding real life context. Section 1.3.1 discusses psychological mechanisms for media realism effects on emotions. Section 1.3.2 discusses psychological mechanisms for media realism effects on memory.

The conceptualization of referents and symbols (Salomon, 1994) explicates how media realism perceptions might lead to different psychological processing mechanisms.

Referents are natural, existential phenomena that signal characteristics of our environment and impart meaning simply by existing; referents are what they are, and are not manufactured for the purpose of representation (Salomon, 1994). For referents, people attribute characteristics and take action. Symbols are any object, movement, gesture, mark or event that can be used to represent, denote or express something beyond itself (Salomon, 1994). For symbols, people extract semantic knowledge, infer meaning and ascribe intent, (Salomon, 1994). To the extent the user perceives media portrayals as

16 increasingly symbolic (i.e. bad acting, labels of fiction), s/he applies a symbolic interpretation to the stimulus. To the extent that the user perceives the media portrayal as a referent, s/he responds to the stimuli as though it represented real life.

Symbols and referents imply different consequences. Referents may imply direct self- relevant threats or opportunities highly relevant to survival which warrant mobilization, whereas symbols generally do not warrant mobilization. By default, media users tend to perceive media as referents (Reeves & Nass, 1996; Shapiro & Lang, 1991; Gerrig &

Pillow, 1991) as opposed to symbolic constructions of those referents. When the symbolic nature of the media is recognized, increased cognitive effort is necessary to decode/ascribe meaning to the symbol. Signs are a unique type of symbol necessarily and causally linked to their referents, (i.e. smoke is a sign of fire). Similarly, the genre of documentary or “reality” media represents a special category of symbolic content because it is necessarily and directly linked to its referent, i.e. the actual people, places and events that documentary media represent. For example, in a fantasy portrayal of an interpersonal interaction, there is no claim that the referent, the interpersonal interaction, ever existed. Fantasy or dramatic content may be indirectly linked to its referent, (i.e.

“based on a true story”), and even in ways more compelling than documentary; however, fantasy content is not necessarily or directly linked to a referent. On the other hand, a documentary portrayal of the same interpersonal interaction is necessarily directly linked to an actual interpersonal interaction that happened in real life. In a fantasy portrayal, writers, actors, directors, cameramen, editors, etc. produce a symbolic portrayal. In general, viewers do not consider the levels of media industry (i.e. equipment, artists, producers, corporations, laws, policies) involved in producing a portrayal. Instead,

17 audiences generally perceive a portrayal as though it directly represented the referent.

Editing, scripting and other artistic choices that occur in producing media portrayals of an event tend to increase the distortion between how things exist naturally and how they appear symbolically. Even if a fantasy portrayal claims to represent events or people in real life, or claims to be linked to a referent at some level, fantasy portrayals generally involve more levels of mediation and manufacturing in the representation than documentary portrayals, which tends to weaken the relationship between the referent and symbolic representation. In sum, there is a spectrum in the extent to which symbolic representations can directly or indirectly represent people, places and events in the real world, and documentary or reality media necessarily claims a more direct link to events in the real world than fantasy content.

1.3.1. Psychological mechanisms for media realism effects on emotion

Relative to human evolution, media have been part of the human environment for about a “nanosecond.” By default, our “old” brains have not evolved to process media differently than real life (Reeves & Nass, 1996). As has been discussed, children must pass through several stages as they develop the ability to interpret symbols differently from their referents. Similarly, in 1903, adults who had no experience with the film medium ducked and screamed when first exposed to a bandit firing a gun at them in

Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery. Despite the knowledge that media present no self-relevant consequences, savvy film audiences today still experience arousal when viewing media representations of sex and violence, although with repeated exposure, desensitization may result (Carnagey, Anderson, & Bushman, 2007). In general, with

18 repeated exposure and experience of no consequences, individuals learn that media symbols differ from their referents: they do not signal self-relevant threats or opportunities that warrant mobilization. Meanwhile, in reality, perceptually equivalent stimuli still signals self-relevant threats or opportunities that warrant mobilization.

Individuals living today in a media-saturated reality will need to master the skill of responding appropriately to survival threats and opportunities.

Symbolic representations arouse emotional responses because they excite the same neural mechanisms in the brain that evolved in the real world. The International Affective

Picture System , also known as IAPS, (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1998) demonstrates that pictures activate relatively “hard-wired” defensive and appetitive motivational states based on their association with "primary reinforcers" essential to survival in the real world (Bradley, Codispoti, Cuthbert, & Lang, 2001). According to a motivational theory of emotion, positive emotions reflect an appetitive system in which stimuli associated with opportunities to promote survival in the real world (i.e. food, sex) motivate approach responses towards the stimuli. Negative emotions reflect a defensive system in which stimuli associated with survival threats in the real world (i.e. accidents, mutilations) motivate responses to avoid the stimuli. Stimuli that strongly activate motivation systems

(i.e. "primary reinforcers" such as threatening or erotic stimuli) elicit higher levels of sympathetic arousal. Measurement of the output of the sweat glands via skin conductance levels provides a gauge of the level and extent of sympathetic activity. Skin conductance is a relatively direct index of sympathetic arousal, and has been interpreted to indicate preparation to act on perceived threats and opportunities, conceptualized as the intensity of activation of appetitive or defensive motivational systems (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert,

1997). As the word’s roots suggest, emotions motivate action, specifically in contexts that are highly relevant to survival, and skin conductance provides an index of emotional intensity, or motivation activation.

Concurring with the view that people’s “old” brains have not evolved to process media stimuli differently than real life (Reeves & Nass, 1996), skin conductance responses to media showing survival implications indicate preparation for action as though media were real life. Yet, the awareness that media are less real has also been shown to reduce this emotional response, as compared to viewers who perceive media as more real and respond with increased emotional intensity. Two between-subjects studies demonstrate that a single film clip showing a “prize fight” labeled as real versus fictional produced increased sympathetic arousal, indicated by skin conductance (Geen, 1975;

Geen & Rakosky, 1973). The present study aims to expand these findings by testing them in a larger array of content (high and low arousal), across multiple messages, and by examining effects of perceived realism on heart rate, skin conductance and memory, both short term and long term. Furthermore, the present study will attempt to examine these findings for desensitized audiences, as it has been suggested that desensitized individuals respond to real violence as though it were fictional (e.g. Carnagey, Anderson &

Bushman, 2007).

Two experiments examined perceived realism effects on emotional intensity and memory (Huston, Wright, Fitch, Wroblewski, & Piemyat, 1997; Pouliot & Cowen, 2007).

In a study by Huston, Wright, Alvarez, et al. (1995), third and fourth grade children showed no differences in their emotional response to a 15-minute video clip of a family conflict presented as documentary or drama, but showed increased recall for the content

20 they perceived as factual. Pouliot and Cowen (2007) conducted a 3 Content x 2 Realism between subjects experiment. Participants viewed documentary and fictional film versions of 2-minute matched clips depicting “AIDS,” “Wedding” and “Ghandi.” A manipulation check revealed that self-reported perceived realism differed significantly for each matched pair. Realism was thus a fixed factor representing genre cues, which produced significant differences in self reported perceived realism. Participant’s self- reported emotional intensity was generally higher for the fictional clips, although the

Ghandi clip did not follow this pattern. Participants’ recognition memory for audiovisual details presented in the clip was generally higher for fictional clips, although the wedding clip did not follow this pattern. This dissertation extends this research by testing effects of perceived realism on emotion and memory using a broader range of video content (low and high arousal), and by employing objective measures of physiological arousal with self-reports to measure emotional intensity. As shall be discussed in the sections below, increased arousal, conceptualized as emotional intensity, often enhances event memory.

If media realism enhances arousal, it may facilitate memory for media perceived as real.

To test such arousal as a predictor of memory, the relative contributions of realism and emotion in predicting memory for message content will also be examined. If realistic video media content is more memorable, it might have a greater impact on worldviews, as memory for media content has been shown to provide a stronger predictor of worldviews than exposure (Shapiro, 1991).

1.3.2. Psychological mechanisms for media realism effects on memory

This section will discuss the Source Monitoring Framework (SMF, Johnson,

Hashtroudi & Lindsay, 1993; Lindsay & Johnson, 1987), and three cases in which reality monitoring failures can occur in media contexts, in which memories based in non- veridical sources are mistaken for memories based in veridical sources. The next two sections discuss how realism perceptions might affect memory encoding processes, via sympathetic arousal and parasympathetic responses. Finally, the literature on perceived realism and learning from media is reviewed in light of how media features might influence physiological responses and memory encoding processes.

According to the Source Monitoring Framework (SMF, Johnson, Hashtroudi &

Lindsay, 1993; Lindsay & Johnson, 1987), memories are often stored without source information, leading to inaccurate attributions about whether memories come from internal (subjective) or external (objective) sources. People tend to use contextual cues in order to make attributions about the source of the memory. Vivid memories with rich perceptual detail and memories that require little effort to store are generally attributed to physical world sources (Mitchell & Johnson, 2000). Media frequently present perceptually vivid content, that is arousing and which require little cognitive effort to process; thus, it is not uncommon for memories from video media to be attributed to real world sources and inadvertently used in real world decision making contexts.

Frequent exposure to vivid media messages cultivates a view of reality informed by media. Over time, heavy television users’ perceptions about social reality mirror media portrayals (Potter, 1988). Mass media representations often depart from or distort actual frequencies of events in reality. Content analyses of American mainstream media

22 consistently show that sanitized violence, casual sexual relations, and conservative political values are statistically over-represented while representations of women, people of color, the elderly, and the disabled are statistically under-represented and usually portrayed in a stereotypical manner, when compared to the average incidences of these events in reality. The frequency and vividness of media portrayals are theorized to inform prototypical exemplars in memory (Shrum, 2009). Frequency estimations about social events in the real world are often based on prototypical exemplars in memory.

Reality Monitoring describes processes that lead a memory to be bound with its source at the time of encoding (Johnson, 2006). Source binding is necessary to identify and exclude memories based in inappropriate sources from being used in a decision- making or action contexts. Failures in Reality Monitoring can occur for three reasons: a) the source is not known or considered at encoding, b) the source is not accepted at encoding, or c) the source is encoded, but then forgotten. This section reviews evidence about the relationship between perceived realism and memory with reference to these three scenarios. In addition, this section will review research that manipulates source encoding to examine effects on message processing, memory and attitudes.

Automatic acceptance. Research in cognitive and social psychology suggests that

“People are credulous creatures who find it very easy to believe and very difficult to doubt” (Gilbert, p. 117). By default, people tend to believe every assertion encountered, immediately and mandatorily, before reason discounts the belief (Gilbert 1991). In line with research documenting people’s tendency to believe, people tend to respond to media content as though it represented real life (Reeves & Nass, 1996). As discussed, theorists of Presence and Transportation describe the perception of media as real as involving

23 heightened emotions. Increased emotional arousal corresponds to self-reported emotional intensity, and has been reliably associated with increased memory (LaBar & Cabeza,

2006). Thus, if perceived realism of media increases arousal, arousal is likely to enhance message memory.

The relationship between arousal and learning is complex and involves many structures in the brain depending on the content being processed. Evolutionary psychology hypothesizes that increased memory for emotionally arousing or threatening stimuli was an adaptive way to avoid future threats and increase chances of survival. The amygdala has a well-established role in the control of physiological responses to emotionally arousing or threatening stimuli (LeDoux, 1996) and activation of the amygdala has been associated with heightened memory (Hamann, Ely, Grafton, & Kilts,

1999).

Several studies indicate that increased realism of media violence increases social learning of aggressive behavior. Holding violent content constant, a single film clip perceived as real versus fictional increased aggressive behavior among adults (Berkowitz

& Alioto, 1973; Geen, 1975; Geen & Rakosky, 1973; Thomas & Tell, 1974) and children

(Atkin, 1983; Feshbach, 1972; Sawin, 1981). Naturalistic studies also show a correlation between violent media exposure and aggression among children who perceive television as more realistic (Eron, Huesmann, Brice, Fischer, & Mermelstein, 1983; Huesmann,

Lagerspetz, & Eron, 1984). Children may be more susceptible than adults to cultivation effects (e.g. beliefs and attitudes aligned with television content) because they are likely to process social information on television without considering the source or discounting fictional sources. Children are more likely to confuse fictional content for factual content.

Until children reach age eight, most do not accurately identify factual and fictional television content. As children get older, they are more likely to discount social information from fictional sources. Developmental research indicates that making and integrating a reality judgment while simultaneously comprehending social information presented is a complex task for children to handle. Cantor and Wilson (1984) showed children a frightening scene from The Wizard Oz. In the unreality condition, children were told to remember that the program was just make-believe, and that the witch was just a regular person in a costume. The explanation reduced fear reactions as compared to the control condition, in which children were given no explanation. Nine to eleven year old children were most likely to cope with frightening stimuli by telling themselves it was not real, whereas three to seven year olds were better able to cope by engaging in non- cognitive strategies, such as getting something to eat or drink (Wilson, Hoffner, &

Cantor, 1987).

As young as eight years old, children may be able to apply source information in order to critically evaluate and discount media messages. After exposure to a drama or documentary about one of two unusual professions (caterer and film director), 2nd and

5th graders’ role schemata about one of the two professions was measured by frequency ratings, multiple choice and free response questions. Although children learned social role schemata from both fictional and factual television, they acquired significantly more schema information from real TV than fictional TV, at least when fictional TV offered obvious genre or socially unrealistic cues (Huston et al., 1997). There is also evidence that realistic media can enhance pro-social learning effects (Reeves, 1978; Thomas,

Hyde, & Komesaroff, 2007).

At least for children, emotional arousal associated with perceived realism may not be necessary for memory effects to occur. In an experiment by Huston, Wright, Alvarez et al. (1995), third and fourth grade children viewed one of three 15 minute films depicting a family conflict, presented as a documentary, drama, or realistic drama. Based on the researchers’ observations of children, perceived realism was not associated with differences in emotional reactions. Observations of emotions are perhaps not a reliable or valid measure. In addition, the films were perhaps not emotionally provocative. Children perceived the documentary as more factual than the other versions and the factual portrayals led to greater recall of complex, inferential content and psychological states

(e.g., intentions, motives) of characters. Assuming these children had the ability to distinguish and discount fictional content, critical evaluation may have interfered with encoding the message into memory.

Source is not accepted. Even when a message is clearly labeled as fictional, people may disregard cues of false sources because they are highly motivated fulfill information seeking motives, or for entertainment reasons, to obtain the emotional gratifications associated with belief (i.e. transportation, escapism, parasocial interactions). On the other hand, overt truth claims may trigger message scrutiny and disbelief, i.e. when a message claims to be an accurate, veridical representation of external reality. Objective truth standards are very hard to meet by any account, and it’s impossible to make everyone happy given each person’s subjective standards. To the extent that mass media claims to represent objective truth, audience perceptions of journalistic credibility have been declining (e.g. Johnson, 2007). In what is known as a spiral of cynicism (Cappella &

Jamieson, 1997), sensationalized, market-driven journalism has lost credibility with the

26 people, who have also lost faith in the credibility of their government. This is problematic for people’s ability to know about objective information on a mass scale, and they risk missing important information about reality.

Source is forgotten. The sleeper effect occurs when contextual information that identifies an event as based in reality or fantasy is forgotten or disassociated from the event. For example, a persuasive message from a low credibility source could become more influential after a long delay because the receiver remembers the persuasive message, but has forgotten its unreliable source (Allen & Stiff, 1989). The perceptual vividness of the audio-visual medium and the emotional, social content of television effectively simulate the experience of real world events. Perceptual vividness would likely increase the likelihood that the television-based source of memories is forgotten, so that these memories are likely attributed to reality. In sum, television viewers may forget that what they saw on TV did not really happen (Shapiro & Lang 1991). Heavy television viewers tend to overestimate the prevalence of crime, violence, sexual infidelity, natural disasters and other phenomena which occur quite infrequently in the real world according to actual statistics but which are frequently portrayed on television, likely for their sensational appeal. When estimating frequencies and probabilities of events (i.e. in surveys that ask people to report their perceptions of crime, violence, etc.), the ease with which examples can be brought to mind may provide as a shortcut or heuristic. Shrum

(2009) contends that vividness, recency and frequency of media messages increase the ease with which examples from media sources can be brought to mind. Over time, heavy television watchers tend to accumulate more television entertainment memories than light viewers, which changes their perception of what is normative. Information frequently

27 reinforced on television also becomes more available in memory and more easily accessible and applicable in real world settings.

Priming individuals to use credible sources in social judgment tasks might reduce cultivation effects. Shrum, Wyer and Guinn (1998) demonstrated that cultivation effects could be “eliminated” among heavy television viewers by priming them to consider television habits prior to the social judgment task, or by priming them with the knowledge that the constructs they would be estimating appeared more often on television than in real life. Similarly, Busselle (2000) found that asking individuals to recall an example and its source (i.e. personal experience, media, etc) before a social judgment task eliminated cultivation effects. When individuals made a social judgment before recalling an example and its source, evidence of cultivation was observed

(Busselle, 2000). These studies provide evidence that the availability heuristic operates during social judgment tasks (i.e. estimating the frequency of social phenomena), and that priming individuals to think critically about sources before responding seems to encourage them to use more veridical sources in their estimates. Another potential way to interfere with cultivation effects is in exploring how media realism perceptions might affect encoding of source information into memory.

Source effects at memory encoding. According to Source Monitoring Framework

(SMF), memories are bound to contextual experience. When retrieving memories, people tend to use contextual cues to make attributions about memory sources. Memories rich in perceptual detail and which required little effort to store are generally attributed to physical world sources (Mitchell & Johnson, 2000). Memories which require higher levels of cognitive effort to store tend to be attributed to imagined sources (Johnson,

Hashtroudi & Lindsay, 1993). Reality monitoring (RM) refers to discrimination between memories of internal and external events (e.g., Johnson & Raye, 1981). Contextual experiences at encoding are also used to attribute memories to external (veridical) or internal (non-veridical) sources. Accurate memory would likely promote the ability to identify survival threats and opportunities, and correctly attributing memories based in existential reality from memories based in imagination or dreams would also likely aid in promoting survival. Reality monitoring failures occur when the source of a memory is not considered, not accepted, or forgotten.

Early work in Reality Monitoring emphasized monitoring during remembering.

Johnson and colleagues (see (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) subsequently showed that success in RM tasks may also depend on successful encoding processes (e.g., binding of features) that will later help discriminate the source of information (e.g.,

(Chalfonte & Johnson, 1996; Mitchell, Johnson, Raye, & D'Esposito, 2000); (Mitchell,

Johnson, Raye, Mather, & D'Esposito, 2000). Media representations vary in the extent to which they represent existential reality versus the imagination of artists. By default, media users do not seem to critically evaluate or consider the source of media representations; rather, they tend to respond as though media representations were veridical, or like “real life” (Reeves & Nass, 1996). If information consumers consider the source of information, then perceived veracity would likely contextual experience during message encoding in ways consistent with Reality Monitoring. Thus, media offer a unique opportunity to examine how the perception of veracity affects memory encoding processes, holding stimulus factors constant.

Perceived Realism, Arousal and Memory. Reality monitoring of media is an important task for information consumers. Media representations vary in the extent to which they reflect external reality versus imagination. Previous research suggests that when media users are made aware of the source of media content as based in existential reality versus fantasy, their experience of the presentation changes. Holding violent content constant, a single film clip perceived as real versus fictional caused increased physiological arousal among male viewers (Geen, 1975; Thomas & Tell, 1974). In addition, a single film clip perceived as real versus fictional caused increased aggressive behavior among adults, as measured immediately after exposure (Berkowitz & Alioto,

1973; Geen, 1975; Geen & Rakosky, 1973; Thomas & Tell, 1974). The mechanism linking perceived realism with increased aggressive behavior is unclear; the aggressive behavior may be due to increased learning of a single violent scene perceived as real, or it may be due to excitation transfer, in which increased generalized arousal elicited by violent scenes perceived as real was transferred to increased physical aggression.

Arousal is conceptualized as an index of motivation activation. Motivation activation systems evolved to coordinate physiological responses that prepare an organism to approach survival opportunities or avoid survival threats (e.g. A. Lang, 2009; P. Lang,

2008). Stimuli strongly associated with survival implications (i.e. sex and violence) consistently produce increases in arousal, as measured by sympathetic nervous system activity and self-report (Lang, 2009). Stimuli that signal self relevant consequences tend to elicit higher levels of motivation activation.

A great deal of evidence suggests that arousal enhances memory (e.g., McGaugh,

2004; Phelps, 2004). Arousing events, both positive and negative, are more likely to be

30 remembered than non-arousing ones (Kesinger, 2009). For negative events, memory for details is generally better (focal enhancement). From an evolutionary standpoint, remembering information that is highly relevant for survival (e.g. food, sex, violence, and associated signals) would likely promote survival. Increased memory for emotional information is supported physiologically by an emotional memory network “core,” consisting of interactions between the amygdala, hippocampus, and orbitofrontal cortex that seem critically engaged whenever information elicits arousal, irrespective of valence

(Kesinger, 2009). The affective processing regions (e.g., the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex) modulate regions that facilitate encoding of sensory detail (fusiform gyrus) and memory consolidation (hippocampal formation) (Kesinger, 2009). During the retrieval of emotional memory, details associated with an episode may be easier to retrieve due to increased strength of connectivity between the amygdala and the hippocampus modulated by activity within the orbitofrontal cortex (Smith et al., 2006, cited in Kesinger, 2009). In addition, memories for arousing events are less likely to decay, even when minimal attention allocated to an event (Sharot & Phelps. 2004).

Arousal does not enhance memory for all aspects. Relative to non-emotional events, people are more likely to remember emotional events, both positive and negative, as having happened (e.g., I remember that I attended a funeral or a wedding); however, for negative events, people are more likely to remember the particular details of the event

(e.g., what the church looked like, where I sat during the service). Negative valence affords a greater benefit upon memory for detail; whereas, positive information is often not remembered with more detail than neutral information (Kesinger, 2009). Thus,

31 negative information is often remembered with a greater sense of vividness than positive information (Kesinger, 2009).

A richly vivid memory for the perceptual details of an event implies greater attention to the external environment during an event, as opposed to the internal environment. The

Laceys contended that cardiac deceleration is instrumental in facilitating sensory intake

(Lacey & Lacey, 1970). Additional research has also shown that heart rate decelerates when attention is paid to an external stimulus, and sensory information is taken in (e.g.,

A. Lang, 1990; Mulder & Mulder, 1981; Turpin, 1986). This phasic heart rate deceleration occurs over two to five heartbeats (i.e., in the first 3 to 4 sec) immediately following the eliciting stimulus and is mediated by the parasympathetic nervous system

(Codispotti, 2008). Jennings’ (1992) model of motor inhibition explains attention-related cardiac deceleration as reflecting an aroused state of increased attention but inhibited activity, which gives way to a precisely timed movement and heartbeat acceleration.

“Cardiac deceleration may be a resetting adjustment necessary for new coordinations of behavior and basic to the appropriate operation of our information-processing system”

(Codispoti, Surcinelli, & Baldaro, 2008). Cardiac deceleration does not seem to differ for pleasant and unpleasant film clips equated for subjective reports of emotional arousal

(Codispoti et al., 2008).

Perceived Realism, Parasympathetic Activity and Contextual Memory. Lacey (1969) proposed that heart rate deceleration corresponded to perception of the external environment, whereas heart rate acceleration corresponded to mentation, or attention to internal events. Before discussing current literature on cardiac activity as it pertains to perception (attention to external events) and mentation (attention to internal events), it is

32 necessary to establish key principles of cardiac activity. First, the heart is dually enervated by the sympathetic (accelerating) and parasympathetic (decelerating) nervous systems; however, the parasympathetic influence is generally dominant (A. Lang, 2009;

Allen, 2008). The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, (which together compose the autonomic nervous system), can be considered analogous to the accelerator and brake systems on a car. The sympathetic nervous system is activated in “fight or flight” situations that warrant quick physical action. The parasympathetic nervous system supports “resting and digesting.” These systems are typically complementary rather than antagonistic. Finally, whereas sympathetic activity has a clear role in supporting action, increasing linearly in arousing situations, the role of parasympathetic activity in arousing situations is less clear, partially due to issues with obtaining accurate measurement of parasympathetic activity and partially due to stimulus confounds

The parasympathetic nervous system influences heart rate via the vagus nerve, which slows heart rate by dripping acetylcholine; thus, heart rate deceleration is mediated and negatively correlated with vagal nerve activity. Acceleration can be associated with increased sympathetic activity and/or removal of vagal/parasympathetic influence, known as vagal withdrawal. The denervated heart beats at over100bpm, and is thus relatively constantly slowed by the vagal nerve releasing acetylcholine. Removing, or withdrawing

“the vagal brake,” then increases heart rate. Vagal nerve activity, indexed by heart rate variability estimates, generally correlates with heart rate in the range of -.43 (Thayer,

2009). “Vagal withdrawal” is theorized to increase metabolic output in support of fight or flight reactions and/or increased brain activity (Thayer, 2009). The vagus nerve is physically connected to pre-frontal cortex structures which have been shown to be

33 involved in tasks requiring cognitive effort (Thayer, 2009). Evidence linking vagally- mediated heart rate acceleration with increased pre-frontal cortex activity during tasks that require increased cognitive effort is reviewed in Thayer (2009). Cognitive effort tasks typically involve asking people to engage in difficult or abstract mental tasks, such as mathematic calculations, or tasks which involve complex symbolic manipulation or interpretation. Pre-frontal cortex regions are generally implicated in a broad range of tasks that involve executive functioning (Miller, 2009).

According to an evolutionary perspective, the vagal brake evolved after the sympathetic nervous system to “fine tune” adaptive responses in a quicker more adjustable fashion (Porges, 2007). This “fine tuning” of emotional responses has been implicated in emotion regulation, or healthy emotional functioning (Porges, 2007). The vagal brake is the star, or supporting cast member, in a range of studies on emotion regulation and cognitive functioning. Studies on individual differences in the resting

“strength” of the vagal brake, indexed by measuring baseline/resting heart rate variability levels, indicate that a “weak” vagal brake can be problematic. Lower levels of resting heart rate variability, (indicating a “weak” vagal brake), have been associated with emotion regulation problems, such as depression, (Rottenberg, 2006), generalized anxiety disorder (Thayer, Friedman, & Borkovec, 1996), impulse control disorders (Beauchaine,

2001), and autism (Porges, 2005). Higher levels of resting/baseline heart rate variability in the high frequency range, (indicating a “strong” vagal brake), have been shown to predict survival in post-myocardial patients, and improved performance on cognitive tasks involving executive function (Thayer, 2009). Furthermore, having people exercise prior to performing a difficult cognitive task increased heart rate variability levels and

34 cognitive performance from baseline, and cognitive performance improvements were mediated by increases in vagal activity/heart rate variability (Thayer, 2009).

Physiological reactions are multiply determined (Lang, 2009), and it is difficult to rule out alternative explanations for effects. Interpretation of vagal activity is complicated by the fact that increases have been associated with relaxation versus stress (Porges,

2007), and have also been reliably associated with sensory perception versus “cognitive effort”. Sensory perception and cognitive effort seem to have antagonistic effects on parasympathetic activity, as indicated by vagal activity. The possible intersection of these two dimensions might produce the space shown below:

Arousal HR↓ HRV↑ HR ↑ HRV↓ I. Freezing Sensory I. II. Mentation / II. Fight/Flight Perception / Attention to III. Social Engagement Attention to Internal Events III. IV. IV. Meditation External Events Relaxation

Changes in parasympathetic activity seem to correspond to changes in attention to external versus internal events. Tasks that require cognitive effort elicit vagal withdrawal, supporting mentation, or constructive and reconstructive processes of internal mental experience that require cognitive effort (Mitchell & Johnson, 2000). Motivationally relevant stimuli elicit vagal suppression, supporting sensory perception and attention to external events. According to the Defense Cascade Model, a negative arousing event initially elicits increased parasympathetic activity, supporting system quieting and sensory perception of the external environment, followed by vagal withdrawal, which increases metabolic output to support fight or flight action and/or executive functioning.

Across numerous studies, vagal withdrawal correlates with internal modeling, while

35 vagal suppression correlates with keeping perceptual vigilance (Thayer, Hansen, Saus-

Rose, & Johnsen, 2009). If vagal activity reflects online navigation of attention between external and internal events, strong vagal control seems to enhance the individuals’ ability to do navigate attention appropriately. Situational Awareness has been described as the ability to flexibly adapt attention to internal versus external events, and has been shown to be associated with high levels of resting heart rate variability (Thayer et al.,

2009). Reality Monitoring (Johnson, 2006) involves distinguishing between external and internal events. Memories are encoded with contextual cues, later used to attribute the source of the memory to external or internal events. Maintaining disbelief, critical awareness of the mediated nature of an experience and perhaps encoding the representational characteristics would likely require more cognitive effort than during message encoding than belief (Gilbert, 1991).

Motivationally relevant, highly arousing stimuli generally absorb more cognitive resources than neutral stimuli, leaving less resources available, which produces interference effects on secondary task processing (Bradley et al., 1996, 1999; Calvo &

Nummenmaa, 2007; Okon-Singer, Tzelgov, & Henik, 2007; Pereira et al., 2006). When positive and negative stimuli are equated in terms of arousal ratings, highly arousing stimuli, both positive and negative, capture greater attentional resources than low arousing stimuli, with no difference as a function of valence (Blair et al., 2007; Bradley et al., 1999; Bradley, Drobes, & Lang, 1996; Nummenmaa, Hyönä, & Calvo, 2006;

Schimmack, 2005; Verbruggen & De Houwer, 2007; cited in Codispoti et al., 2008).

In a recent experiment, Shiller et al (2009) showed that inducing the original intensity of emotion associated with a stimulus during fear-conditioning, allowed for effective

36 extinguishing of the fear memory, as evidenced by galvanic skin response. Perhaps this suggests that the brain is matching externally perceived information to internalized prototypical schema, organized according to emotional intensity. If associations are stored on the basis of motivation activation, media simulations that do not actually involve self-relevant consequences may be stored in a different mental prototype that is perhaps more liberal than the conservative mental prototype associated with self-relevant consequences. Memories are constantly updated and stored based on the motivational relevance of the experience.

Perceived realism and memory. The present research takes the perspective that biological features that promoted the prediction of self relevant consequences were selectively retained over the course of evolution. Self-relevant consequences can be symbolized by media, but pertain most significantly to predicting survival threats and opportunities in external reality. This research also takes the perspective that the human mind operates like a signal processor, observing frequencies of events perceived in the external environment and the strength of associations between events to build mental models (i.e. prototypical exemplars) which are used to infer reliable signals of self- relevant consequences. Identifying reliable signals of survival threats and opportunities in order to inform appropriate action would also likely represent an important task for survival. Learning false signals can lead to two types of prediction errors: X is present, but you don't detect it, or you think X is present, when it's not. In the second error (type

II), a signal may be false because it is illusory, imagined, or not necessarily linked to the associated self-relevant consequence. Filtering out false signals involves evaluating the credibility of information- whether it is representative of external reality, and likely to

37 predict self-relevant events in reality. However, people do not often critically evaluate information they encounter (Gilbert, 1991), nor do they often remember the source of information in order to assess whether it is representative of reality or not.

A central tenet of Source Monitoring Framework (SMF; Johnson et al., 1993;

Mitchell & Johnson, 2000) is that false memories and veridical memories generally arise via the same mechanisms. Memories are not labeled with “tags” that indicate their sources as false or veridical; rather, people use contextual cues to attribute memories to sources (Mitchell & Johnson, 2000). The cognitive system is “capable of integrating information from multiple sources and generating information on its own…. [these processes] are powerful engines for comprehension and creativity, and the potential cost of these processes are distorted memories and beliefs,” (Mitchell & Johnson, 2000, p.

179). Reality Monitoring Theory (Johnson, 2006; Johnson & Raye, 1981) identifies processes involved in distinguishing memories based in external (veridical) sources versus internal (imagined) sources. Reality Monitoring theory is primarily concerned with errors, in which memories of imagined events are mistaken for actual events or actual events are mistaken for imagined events. To distinguish veridical from non- veridical sources, Reality Monitoring Theory (Johnson, 2006; Johnson & Raye, 1981) predicts that memories with greater perceptual detail will be attributed to external events- the perception of external reality; whereas, memories involving the experience of cognitive effort at encoding will be attributed to imagination, or internally generated mental experiences. Thus, a critical feature used to identify false memories is the contextual experience of cognitive effort.

Transportation theory and Involvement theory, which is a key component of

Presence, argue that message scrutiny interferes with emotionally “being there” within a simulation, and the persuasive effects of that experience. Theories of Presence and

Transportation describe a psychological state of immersion into the world of the story, and the experience of “being there” within a simulation as though it were real life (e.g.

Lombard & Ditton, 2000; Reeves & Nass, 1996). Self-reported Presence and

Transportation have been shown to correlate with self-reported perceived realism (Green,

2004; Lombard & Ditton, 1997; Lombard, Reich, Grabe, Bracken, & Ditton, 2000). In addition, Presence and Transportation experiences involve emotionally intense responses, as though the media presented direct self-relevant consequences. Involvement is considered an important dimension of Presence and describes an intense emotional engagement with media (Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003). Low involvement, on the other hand, involves awareness of the mediated nature of the experience, and a critical stance of detachment or distance from the simulation, which may also involve critical analysis of the representational qualities of the stimuli (Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003). Low levels of

Transportation have been associated with increased critical thoughts about a narrative

(Busselle, Ryabovolova, & Wilson, 2004; Green, 2004), and critical attention to argument points, (Brock & Green, 2005). Similarly, asking participants to focus on the representational or artistic qualities of a stimulus seems to increase cognitive operations which interfere with perceptions of realism. Asking individuals to focus on grammar and sentence structure increased cognitive scrutiny and reduced Transportation from baseline

(Green & Brock, 2000). To manipulate real versus imagined experiences in Reality

Monitoring experiments, participants are asked to imagine stimuli or to perceive it. To

39 focus on representational qualities, participants imagined or saw an object, and then were asked to estimate how long it would take an artist to draw a picture of it, as opposed to naming its function or relevant features. Participants who completed the artist time- judgment task experienced greater cognitive effort involved in reflective imagery, which provided a contextual cue that helped them to correctly attribute the memory to imagination (Durso & Johnson, 1980; Johnson, 2006). Thus, Presence, Involvement and

Transportation theories describe emotional intensity in opposition to cognitive effort, or reflective cognitive operations involved in an awareness of the mediated nature of the experience.

According to Reality Monitoring theory (Johnson, 2006), people are most likely to confuse mental experiences based in imagination for perception of external events when imagination is relatively natural or effortless. Media vividness and interactivity are known to elicit Presence (Steuer, 1992), and have also been shown to elicit automatic attention allocation to the external environment, facilitating effortless encoding of the external environment. Vividness, operationalized as increased screen size increases arousal (Lombard et al., 2000) and elicits orienting (Reeves, Lang, Kim, & Tatar, 1999).

Conversely, low image resolution and small screen size reduce arousal, and presumably, reduce orienting to the external environment (De Cesarei & Codispoti, 2008).

Interactivity, operationalized as user control over the onset of pictures, has been shown to increase arousal, but not orienting (Wise & Reeves, 2007). Both orienting and arousal indicate automatic allocation of attention to the external environment. Arousal has been defined as an index of motivation activation, which evolved to prepare the organism to approach appetitive stimuli or withdraw from threatening stimuli in the external

40 environment. Stimuli that strongly activate either the appetitive or defensive motivation systems engage processes that facilitate perceptual encoding and recognition in sensory systems (Codispotti, 2008), resulting in increased memory for perceptual detail, particularly for negative content (Kensinger, 2009). Thus, media that elicit high levels of emotional intensity, particularly negative, are likely to elicit effortless sensory perception and encoding of perceptual detail. As discussed by (Thayer et al., 2009), sensory perception and mentation seem to be mutually exclusive processes. Whereas arousal can increase sensory perception and memory for detail, disbelief requires cognitive effort, which may interfere with sensory perception and memory for details.

Disbelief or message scrutiny can be prompted by motivation (Petty & Cacioppo,

1986), explicit cues which alert individuals to the symbolic or constructed nature of the message, or implicit cues which violate individuals’ expectations of the media portrayal

(e.g. (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2008). Expectancy violation is a function of the individual’s expectations of media portrayals and the extent to which media portrayals match their expectations. Hawkins’ (Hawkins, 1977) Social Expectations dimension of perceived reality is based on the possibility and probability of media portrayals happening in real life. Expectations likely reflect prototypical mental models, based on frequencies of experiences in real and mediated contexts. If experiences are primarily derived from media, these experiences will inform expectations of what is plausible and probable in real life. For example, heavy television viewers perceive television content as more like real life than light viewers (Potter, 1988). Furthermore, expectations of real life can be distorted by a single compelling example from media (Gutierres, Kenrick, & Partch,

1999). As Shapiro & Chock (2003, p. 189) "The typicality of story elements strongly

41 influences what we think is real. On the other media, media change what we think is typical."

Perceived realism correlates highly with perceived Typicality (Shapiro & Chock,

2003). Media often portray unlikely events, with which people have limited experience, except perhaps through media. When expectations are poorly formed, media are unlikely to violate expectations and induce critical message evaluation. This may be one reason that atypical events, which are unlikely, seem real. In addition, atypical events may involve strong motivational significance which is likely to elicit automatic attention allocation processes, and vivid memories likely to be attributed to real sources. When content is rated as typical, it seems to indicate that expectations have not been violated, and this may reflect true familiarity or poorly formed expectations. When content is rated as atypical, it seems to indicate that expectations have been violated, which induces critical evaluation or disbelief of the message and interferes with the experience of presence/transportation.

Several theories predict that disbelief requires cognitive effort (Gilbert, 1991), or reflective cognitive operations, which interfere with sensory perception and encoding external events. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) predicts that individuals must have motivation and cognitive resources available to critically evaluate a message; without motivation or available resources, individuals rely on heuristic processing. Limited Capacity Theory (Lang, 2000) predicts that media features which elicit automatic attention allocation processes towards sensory perception interfere with available cognitive resources, so they are less likely to be available to critically evaluate the message. Emotional intensity supports enhanced sensory perception

(Codispotti, 2008), and hence, would seem to be facilitate increased acceptance of external events (e.g. Gilbert, 1991). Video media seem to appropriate an evolved veracity-track into memory, producing perceptually rich mental experience, stored with little cognitive effort. Like McDonald’s, which exploits an evolved, “hard-wired” association between positive emotion and salty/sweet taste, vivid and arousing features of video media elicit physiological responses associated with self-relevant consequences over the course of evolution. Media representations are generally perceived as veridical and encoded into memory by default (Gilbert, 1991). The problem for Reality Monitoring occurs when media representations are not representative of external reality; they communicate prototypical and atypical events equally well, but not how representative they are of external reality (Strange, 2002).

Presence and Transportation have been associated with increased media influence on beliefs and attitudes; however, effects on memory for story details are less clear.

Improved image quality (HDTV) enhanced audience perceptions of source credibility

(Bracken, 2005), and participants who experienced greater Presence in response to a televised infomercial felt more confident in their brand choice (Botta & Bracken, 2002).

Similarly, Transported readers who identify emotionally with characters and events are more likely to show beliefs consonant with story conclusions, have more positive evaluations of story protagonists, and are less likely to disbelieve or counter-argue story claims (Green & Brock, 2000). If arousal and scrutiny mediate the link between perceived realism and memory, manipulations that do not affect arousal or cognitive operations may have no effect on memory. In other words, manipulations of perceived

43 realism are not effective unless they induce arousal which enhances perception, or they induce critical evaluation which interferes with perception.

Using low-arousal video stimuli, Pouiliot and Cowen (2007) showed three pairs of two minute video clips (negative, positive and neutral valence), and then examined memory for audio-visual details immediately following exposure, using a between- subjects design. The documentary excerpt for the wedding (positive valence) was more memorable than the fictional counterpart. There was no significant difference in memory for the dramatic or documentary clips showing AIDS, (negative emotional valence).

There was a slight memory increase for the fictional portrayal of Gandhi, as compared to the documentary portrayal. Since the clips were not controlled, the clips likely produced differences in arousal or cognitive operations, confounding memory effects. Furthermore, emotional intensity was based on self-report.

Several other studies examine realism effects on persuasion and memory using text narratives featuring low arousal content, although one manipulated personal relevance

(Green, Garst, Brock, & Chung, 2006). Using low-arousal text narratives, several studies show that both fact- and fiction-labeled texts change attitudes with equal effectiveness

(Strange & Leung, 1999); Green and Brock, 2000; (Green et al., 2006). Fact and fiction labels had no effect on Transportation in one study (Green & Brock, 2000). In another study, fact labels motivated message scrutiny among readers with low levels of Need for

Cognition (NC); high NC readers scrutinized the text regardless of fact-fiction label

(Green et al., 2006). If only Low NC individuals are considered, attitude change from baseline was greater for the factual-strong-argument than the fictional-strong-argument, but the weak-argument was more persuasive when labeled fiction- which received no

44 scrutiny- than fact (Green et al., 2006). Regardless of fact-fiction label or NC, enhancing the personal relevance of the message increased message scrutiny (Green et al., 2006), consistent with the prediction that increased personal relevance increases message elaboration (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Similarly, Slater (1990) found that nonfictional prose tended to influence readers’ beliefs about category group members’ characteristics to a greater extent than ostensibly fictional ones only when the social category was relatively familiar (e.g., Contra guerrillas and English gentleman farmers). When the category was unfamiliar (e.g., Eritrean guerrillas and Dutch gentleman farmers in Java), the impact of the fictional message was equal to or greater than that of the nonfictional message. These data may also suggest that low familiarity and low personal relevance may be confounded with poorly expectations or low expectation violation, which results in less critical scrutiny. Across these studies, when individuals are motivated to critically process messages, by a label asserting a truth standard (i.e. anything can be labeled fiction), enhanced personal relevance or familiarity, there is evidence that fact is more persuasive than fiction. However, once individuals engage in critical processing, attitude change seems more significantly determined by argument quality and source credibility.

If arguments are equivalent for fact-fiction messages, and the factual or fictional status of the advocate has no implication for source credibility, then fiction-fact labels would not be expected to change attitudes. In other words, given message scrutiny, and equivalent messages, attitude change might only observed if fact-fiction labels have implications for source credibility, i.e. messages involving a real doctor versus a fictional doctor.

Messages involving a real speaker or a fictional speaker advocating X are unlikely to have implications for source credibility under scrutiny (Green et al., 2006).

In support of the proposition that judging media as unreal, or an inauthentic portrayal of real life, requires available cognitive resources, burdening cognitive capacity seems to enhance the perceived realism of messages (Bradley & Shapiro, 2004; Shapiro &

Weisbein, 2001). Shapiro and Fox (2002) investigated the effect of Typicality on memory among college undergraduates. Participants were more likely to remember atypical story items a week later. However, participants were more conservative in accepting memories of atypical items, giving the illusion that typical events are remembered better (Shapiro &

Fox, 2002). Individuals also showed greater memory confidence for typical details, and over time, lost confidence in the accuracy of memories for atypical details as compared to typical details (Shapiro & Fox, 2002). As the content used was generally low arousal content, and again text stimulus, it is assumed that atypical content is more likely to prompt critical evaluation, and be perceived as less real. For low arousal content, increased elaboration may increase memory.

The relationship between perceived realism and learning is complex. Both factual and fictional portrayals can influence beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, and the conditions under which these influences occur are poorly understood. Experimental research on media realism effects use stimuli that vary in terms of form (text, video, still image), content (high/low arousal, negative/positive valence, typical/atypical), and length

(number and duration of messages), generally assessing effects on learning immediately after exposure, using a variety of dependent variables, including: story-consistent beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and social judgments or frequency estimates of social phenomena.

Memory for media information has been shown to provide a more useful predictor of

46 worldview than quantity of media exposure (Shapiro, 1991), but few experiments manipulate perceived realism among adults and then examine effects on memory.

No studies have formally examined whether increased arousal or heart rate deceleration (vagal suppression) mediate the relationship between perceived reality and memory. Arousing stimuli is frequently associated with vagal suppression and increased memory. It would be ideal to formally test whether psychophysiological activity (e.g., sympathetic arousal and/or HR deceleration) mediates the relationship between an experimental manipulation (e.g., realism) and some outcome (e.g., memory performance), to say whether psychophysiological responses represent the generative mechanism through which an experimental manipulation is able to influence the outcome variable (Baron & Kenny, 1986), and also to compare the relative contributions of parasympathetic (indexed by HRV) and sympathetic activity (indexed by skin conductance) in predicting memory performance. Unfortunately, mediation analysis of repeated measures data requires a level of advanced statistical techniques not achieved in the present research.

Encoding content from text media requires more cognitive effort than video media, which elicits automatic attention processes. However, since it is easier to ignore text, cognitive resources could be more available during reading than video. Presence research generally uses head-mounted virtual reality systems, which literally encapsulate the head with perceptually vivid, real-time, interactive stimuli. Transportation research generally manipulates the framing of plain text narratives. If content could be equated, future research might examine how processing text versus video impacts available cognitive resources. Although, equating content during text and video stimuli would be a

47 challenging task. Ultimately, media presentations that absorb more cognitive resources or interfere with resources necessary to disbelieve are hypothesized to be perceived as more real.

Reality monitoring failures are important to avoid (Mitchell & Johnson, 2000;

Johnson, 2007). To encode the media representation as non-veridical requires cognitive effort. Individuals must have motivation and cognitive resources available to maintain active awareness of the mediated nature of the representation. Exerting cognitive effort to critically evaluate media sources at encoding presumably interferes with perception and results in a contextual cue that can later be used to signal the non-real nature of the source. Given that media provide entertainment, it is unlikely that people actively engage in disbelief, unless motivated to obtain accurate information about external reality.

Previous research has demonstrated that the accuracy of frequency estimations of social phenomena among heavy television users can be improved if they consider source information at memory retrieval (Busselle, 2000; Shrum, Wyer & Guinn, 1998).

Presumably, individuals use mental exemplars based on real life sources as opposed to media sources to estimate social phenomena in real life, resulting in a more accurate estimate. Misattributing a factual memory as fiction has essentially no influence on the cultivation effect because people simply ignore these memories and use other bases as criteria for judgments (Mares, 1996).

Figure 1 proposes a chain of mental events involved in reality monitoring processes during mediated experiences. Some aspects of the model will be tested in Study 1 and 2, while other aspects are based on evidence from previous research. I will first explain the model, and then specify hypotheses tested in Study 1 and 2.

1. Referent, existential reality, external to the individual. Perceptions of existential reality are subjective, limited, and represented internally as mental representations.

Despite infinite subjective perceptions of external reality, people come to share perceptions about external reality. Shared perceptions of existential reality are the basis of scientific progress and culture.

2. Perception and internalized representations of external reality. External reality is subjectively perceived based on past experience, direct or mediated. Perceptions are stored in memory as mental representations. Like media representations, mental representations represent external reality through subjective filters. Mental representations are based on internal and external experiences: imagining, synthesizing, and perceiving external information. If mental representations are guided by survival, an essential function of mental representations is to store information in order to predict self- relevant consequences. External input trains mental representations based on associations with self relevant consequences to predict future self-relevant consequences (i.e. accommodation). Meanwhile, mental representations filter and assimilate external input to optimize processing of predictable patterns. Mental representations are trained by frequent associations, and mental prototypes or schema scripts are internal representations of strongly associated relationships based on frequently reinforced external input. Evidence for a statistical processing model of learning is described in detail by Meltzoff, Kuhl, Movellan and Sejnowski (2009). Presumably, keeping an accurate mental representation of a past event will help to predict self-relevant consequences in a similar future situation. The cognitive system constructs and reconstructs, based on information from internal and external sources (Mitchell &

Johnson, 2000). For example, imagining the future involves simulation, and construction and reconstruction of referents that might not yet exist, or which might never exist.

3. Perception of the fantasy-reality distinction. Various media and individual factors influence the perception of media as more or less real:

3a. Content & structural features: Implicit cues of fantasy/reality associated with genre (Table 1), and explicit labels of fantasy/reality. Structural and content features that automatically "absorb" resources, (e.g. vivid, interactive, atypical and motivationally relevant stimuli) interfere with resources available for awareness of mediated nature of stimuli.

3b. Individual differences: Age, motivation to engage in critical processing (e.g. familiarity, relevance), expectations of content (influenced by experience in real and mediated contexts and media literacy), available cognitive resources.

4. Psycho-physiological indices of fantasy versus reality perceptions.

4a. Skin conductance: Self-relevant consequences, likelihood for predicting future self-relevant consequences results in increased utility of information for survvial, simulation is evidenced by taking the perspective of the character, which requires less cognitive resources, this results in greater motivation activation, indicated by self- reported arousal and sympathetic nervous system activity.

4b. Cardiac activity: The heart is dually innervated by both the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, and heart rate carries information about parasympathetic and sympathetic activity (Papillo & Shapiro, 1990). Increased cardiac parasympathetic

(i.e., vagal) activity causes the heart to slow down and is associated with information intake, attention, and approach behavior (Porges, 1995). Increased cardiac sympathetic

50 activity causes the heart to speed up and is associated with emotional arousal, general preparation for action, and mobilization of various types of resources (Obrist, 1981). The parasympathetic and sympathetic systems may covary reciprocally, independently, or nonreciprocally (i.e., there may be coactivation or coinhibition of both divisions;

Berntson, Cacioppo, Quigley, & Fabro, 1994). The roles of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity on heart rate are difficult to tease apart; parasympathetic influence over heart rate can be roughly indexed by high frequency heart rate variability estimates of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). As discussed, vagal “brake” activity changes from moment to moment to facilitate quick adaptive responses to the environment. Heart rate deceleration, mediated by increased parasympathetic activity

(vagal suppression), has been implicated in increased attention to arousing external events, regardless of positive/negative valence. Processing arousing information is associated with attention to external events, indicated by increased parasympathetic activity (Codispoti et al., 2008; Lang, Potter, & Bolls, 2009; Ravaja, 2004). Heart rate acceleration, mediated by decreased parasympathetic activity (vagal withdrawal) has been implicated in attention to internal events, during tasks requiring cognitive effort

(Scerbo et al., 2001), executive function (Thayer et al., 2009), imagination (Bradley &

Lang, 2007), and even compassion meditation (Peng et al., 2004). For video media, which is vivid, quickly changing, and elicits automatic orienting, maintaining a critical detached stance, i.e. an awareness of the mediated nature of the presentation, is hypothesized to involve cognitive effort (i.e. binding awareness of mediated nature of the event as a contextual experience in memory). Vagal withdrawal has been shown to support cognitive effort (Thayer et al., 2009).

Hypotheses for Study 1:

H1) Video clips labeled Real People will elicit greater motivation activation than

equivalent content labeled Actors (Skin conductance and self reported arousal

indicate greater motivation activation)

H2) Video clips labeled Real People are easier to process than equivalent clips labeled

Actors. (Vagal withdrawal, indicated by RSA decreases and HR acceleration indicate

greater cognitive load and mentation for clips labeled Actors).

H3) Recognition memory for details in video clips labeled Real People will be greater

than recognition memory for equivalent clips labeled Actors.

Hypotheses for Study 2. Research on perceived realism in the field of Communication has proposed numerous constructs to describe the subjective perception of media as more or less real. The various conceptualizations discussed in Section 1 can be reduced to three key constructs: Utility, Involvement, and Typicality. As the manipulation check employed in Study 1 relied on a null finding of no significant differences in belief of labels, Study 2 tested whether labels of Real People versus Actors would produce significant differences in subjective self-reports of Utility, Typicality and Involvement. Linking the manipulation used in the present study (i.e. belief that video clips represent "Real People" versus

"Actors") to concepts of Utility, Typicality and Involvement will provide further insight into the subjective experience of perceived realism. Since Study 1 tested recognition memory immediately after stimulus exposure, a second aim of Study 2 was to examine whether perceived realism could produce long term effects on memory. Study 2 employs a free-recall measure of memory and the recognition memory test used in Study 1.

H1) Clips will be perceived as more Typical (H1a), Involving (H1b) and Useful (H1c)

when labeled as Real People versus Actors.

H2) Recognition memory for audiovisual details 24 hours after exposure will be greater

when video clips are labeled Real People versus Actors.

H3) Free recall memory 24 hours after exposure will be greater when video clips are

labeled Real People versus Actors.

1.4. Methodological issues in media realism research

Media realism has been manipulated as an independent variable, in which experimenters tell participants to believe a stimulus is real or fictional, (Atkin, 1983;

Bandura, 1963; Berkowitz & Alioto, 1973; Feshbach, 1972; Geen, 1975; Geen &

Rakosky, 1973; Kramer, Buckhout, Fox, & Widman, 1991; Noble, 1973; Sawin, 1981;

Thomas & Tell, 1974). Pre-reading instructions have also been used to manipulate transportation, which ask participants to either relax while reading a narrative, or adopt a critical mindset, focusing on structural and syntactical details of the text (Green, 2004).

Media realism has also been measured as a dependent variable, in which experimenters ask participants to assess and report the realistic quality of a stimulus, typically answering some version of the question, “How real do you think it is?” or “To what extent are people/places/events in the story are like people/places/events in real life?,” (Green, 2004; Shapiro & Chock, 2003). Green and Brock (2000) have also developed a scale to measure transportation, assessing emotional involvement, cognitive attention, feelings of suspense, lack of awareness of immediate surroundings and mental imagery. Busselle, Ryabovolova, and Wilson (2004) recently employed a method of

53 correlating online evaluations of transportation and program involvement with subsequent perceived realism judgments.2 Presence researchers’ indirect measures of presence include similar off-line self-report measures (i.e. “How present were you in the virtual environment?), on-line physiological responses, and observations of behavioral responses to virtual objects (Insko, 2003; Lee, 2004). Stress and relaxation responses appropriate to the virtual environment as indicated by heart rate and skin conductance responses have been considered reliable, valid, sensitive, and objective presence measures (Meehan, Insko, Whitton, & Brooks, 2002; Meehan, Razzaque, Insko, Whitton,

& Brooks, 2005).

Media realism judgments are formed either naturalistically using implicit cues, or explicit cues found in the stimuli or labels presented by the experimenter. It is unclear to what extent people actively make realism judgments on their own while viewing in natural conditions versus the extent to which researchers are prompting people to engage in artificially induced media realism judgments. According to Busselle, Ryabovolova and Wilson (2004), people do not evaluate realism unless prompted by something in the program or by the researcher. If this is true, researchers may be changing realism judgments by measuring them. Most experiments that examine media realism effects manipulate the reality of the stimulus by explicitly labeling the stimuli; however, few of these experiments perform manipulation checks to verify whether audiences believed the label. Pre-testing is necessary to prevent implicit cues in the content from interfering with the explicit cue, (i.e. dramatic lighting and dollied camera in a film clip labeled as

“real documentary footage” would likely draw suspicion). In performing a manipulation

2 Immediately after viewing crime dramas, participants performed a sentence completion task, “While the program was on, I remember thinking about…” Responses were coded into categories of “Narrative elements,” “non-narrative elements,” and “Unrelated to the program.”

54 check, it is tricky to assess participants’ genuine belief in the stimuli labels as opposed to assessing whether participants remember how the experimenter labeled the clip.

With respect to conceptualization and measurement of media realism judgments, researchers have experienced difficulty in mapping constantly changing and complex content features in media stimuli onto media realism judgments. Different characters, events, programs or genres activate different knowledge sets in individual viewers that inform their unique realism judgments (Busselle & Greenberg, 2000). Furthermore, individuals may perceive an entire genre as relatively unrealistic, yet judge one program in that genre as highly realistic. Realism judgments can vary according to the level of item specificity referenced by the survey question. Item specificity may vary from general, (asking about the realism of a particular medium), to specific, (asking about the realism of a character’s behavior in a specific scene). Reeves (1978) examined perceived realism judgments according to three levels of item specificity: television in general, specific subject groups, and specific characters on specific shows. The most specific items generated the highest realism judgments among third through sixth graders,

(Reeves, 1978). Most realism items do not correspond to any particular content or viewing experience. A typical retrospective media realism survey item is, “How much does the content seem like real life?” Some items may ask about the realism of specific characters or events, but then it remains unclear what elements actually make the character realistic or unrealistic (e.g., emotional responses, behaviors or clothing).

2. Experimental Findings

To experimentally manipulate the effect of media realism, an original stimuli set was developed consisting of eighty six-second video clips which could be framed as “Real

People” or “Actors.” Video clip content was held constant by reversing labels for half the participants. As discussed below in Sections 2.1 and 2.2, pre-testing confirmed that labels manipulated participants’ belief of the clip labels. Sections 2.1 and 2.2 present two experimental studies that examine the effects of media realism on psychological processing.

2.1. Study 1. Media Realism Effects on Emotion and Memory

Media realism is defined as the extent to which the experience of a media representation is equivalent to the experience of its referent. Presence, Transportation and Involvement theories similarly suggest that the key psychological features of media perceived as highly realistic are a lack of critical awareness of the representational medium and emotional engaged response to media as though it were real. In the present study, participants (N = 32) viewed an original stimulus set of 80 six-second video clips, half labeled Real People and half labeled Actors, reversing labels for half the participants to control for content. Clips labeled Actors were rated as less arousing and more positive.

Increased skin conductance levels indicating activation of motivation systems and preparation for action were observed for clips labeled Real People also showing highly arousing content (e.g., segments with violence or sexual themes). Clips labeled Actors decreased heart rate variability, indicating increased cognitive effort. Short term recognition memory was better for audiovisual details in high arousal clips labeled Real

People than equivalent clips labeled Actors. Cognitive effort involved in evaluating a less real source combined with highly arousing content seems to interfere with encoding that content.

2.1.1. Introduction

Media can present content that seems and is more or less real. News shows pictures of actual events, feature films show pictures that are contrived, and all media offer content that can be taken as reality or fantasy depending on the beliefs viewers bring to the experience. Several studies offer descriptions about how people form perceptions of media as more or less like real life. As outlined in Figure 1, various factors of the message and individual differences in social expectations, cognitive abilities and motivations for processing symbolic stimuli interact to influence whether media are perceived as more or less “real.” Regardless of how content is perceived as fantasy or reality, sometimes signaled in the content and sometimes determined by pre-existing beliefs, the presumption is that the summary perception matters, although the mechanism that explains the effect is often not specified.

The perception that media are equivalent to the referents they represent has been described as “the equation of media with real life” (Reeves & Nass, 1996), as well as the

“illusion of non-mediation” (Lombard & Ditton, 1997). The term Presence describes a psychological state in which people experience media as though it were “real life.” In a state of presence, users of virtual environments experience virtual objects as actual objects in either sensory or non-sensory ways (Lee, 2004) and “feel, act and react as they would in a corresponding real world setting” (Whitton, 2003). Transportation theory

57 describes a similar psychological state in which the transported individual “loses access to some real world facts in favor of accepting the narrative world …[and] may experience strong emotions and motivations, even when they know the events in the story are not real” (Green & Brock, 2000). Involvement is an important dimension in both presence and transportation. High involvement is a fascinated, emotionally and cognitively engaged way of enjoying a mediated presentation in which people do not take notice of the mediated nature of the experience, whereas low involvement is a distant, analytical state in which people are conscious of the mediated nature of the experience (Vorderer,

1992).

Researchers have measured presence by asking participants for self-reports about

“how real” a virtual environment seems and the extent to which self-reported emotional responses match those expected in a corresponding real world situation. Transportation is measured by assessing emotional involvement, feelings of suspense, cognitive attention, mental imagery and lack of awareness of immediate surroundings (Green and Brock,

2000). Transportation has also been shown to correlate with perceived realism, particularly when audiences suspend a critical mindset (Busselle et al., 2004; Green,

2004; Wilson & Busselle, 2004). These theories describe similar psychological effects in which the “illusion of non-mediation” correlates with self-reported realism and results in strong emotions and low scrutiny of the message.

The present study tested the predictions of presence and transportation in the domain of video media using psycho-physiological responses as indices of cognitive effort and emotion. In line these theories, this study proposes to test whether the perception of video media as more “real” intensifies emotions and reduces cognitive effort involved in

58 processing the message. The term “suspension of a critical mindset” inaccurately presumes that individuals approach messages with critical mindsets by default. To the contrary, a great deal of evidence suggests that people are pre-disposed to believe

(Gilbert, 1991). Critical examination of media is hypothesized to require greater cognitive effort than processing media which is directly connected to referent reality.

Secondly, media perceived as real is also perceived is hypothesized to be more self- relevant, and more likely to activate primitive motivation systems associated with emotional experience.

According to the Source Monitoring Framework (Johnson, 2006), people make attributions about memory sources source based on characteristics of the memory, including perceptual, contextual, semantic and emotional details and cognitive operations that created the memory. Individuals are more likely to attribute vivid, detailed memories, generated with little cognitive effort to perception of external reality (Johnson et al., 1993; Johnson & Raye, 1981). Less perceptually vivid memories and memories bound to experiences of cognitive effort are likely to be attributed to imagined sources

(Johnson et al., 1993; Johnson & Raye, 1981). In the present study, only the viewer’s perception of the source of information as based in reality or fiction is manipulated.

Consistent with SMF, different sources are hypothesized to involve different processing mechanisms that result in qualitatively differently memories for the same event. Despite the equivalence of the information presented, different psychological processing mechanisms will result in different source attributions. Specifically, the processing of video content perceived as real is hypothesized to activate primitive emotional responses equivalent to responses expected in real life. Primitive emotional responses are

59 hypothesized to facilitate sensory encoding, resulting in greater recall for perceptual details. Information perceived from a constructed, or non-veridical source is hypothesized to require cognitive resources, resulting in a contextual experience of cognitive operations that improves source memory and interference with sensory encoding.

Media Realism and Emotion. Media initiate emotional responses because they excite the same neural mechanisms in the brain that evolved in the real world. Although pictures do not present the same consequences as their referents, pictures activate motivational states based on their association with primary reinforcers essential to survival in the real world. Research using a standardized pictorial stimulus set, the International Affective

Picture System, demonstrates that viewing pictures with strong implications for survival, such as threatening or erotic pictures, elicits increased levels of sympathetic arousal, indicating preparation to act on perceived threats and opportunities (Lang et al., 1998).

The present research adopts a biphasic approach to emotion, which posits that “emotion fundamentally stems from varying activation in centrally organized appetitive and defensive motivational systems that have evolved to mediate the wide range of adaptive behaviors necessary for an organism struggling to survive in the physical world,”

(Bradley & P. J. Lang, 2007 ). In the biphasic view, evaluative reports of valence roughly index which motivational system is activated by the stimulus or task (i.e., appetitive

“pleasant,” or defensive “unpleasant”), whereas judgments of arousal index (again, roughly) the degree of activation in each motivation system (Bradley & P.J. Lang, 2007).

As the roots of the word suggest, emotion motivates action.

Media perceived as real arouse stronger emotions because they signal consequences that could be or are self-relevant to the user. The frame of fiction, on the other hand, does

60 not necessarily signal self-relevant consequences. Video clips framed as real people are directly tied to referents in the real world, whereas video clips framed as Actors are not necessarily tied to referents in the real world, and thus, consequences portrayed are less likely to be self-relevant. Thus, media perceived as real are hypothesized to be more strongly associated with self-relevant consequences. The implication of self-relevant consequences that warrant attention and action and the associations of these consequences lead to increased activation of primitive motivation systems associated with the experience of intensified emotion.

Content labeled as Real People is hypothesized to elicit increased arousal. In the present study, this is tested by measuring sympathetic nervous system activity and self- reported arousal in response to clips framed as Real People versus Actors, holding clip content constant. Skin conductance measures provide indices of sympathetic nervous system activity, which together with self-reports roughly index motivation activation. The electrodermal reaction reflects “the primary nature of emotions as action dispositions that are mediated by sympathetic activity preparing the organism for fight, flight, and other appropriate appetitive and defensive behaviors,” (Bradley & P.J. Lang 2007, p. 590). The sympathetic nervous system, as indexed by the electrodermal reaction, is engaged by appetitive as well as aversive stimulation, and appears to be similarly activated in perception, imagery, and anticipation contexts, (Bradley & P.J. Lang, 2007). As described in detail in the methods section, the experimental stimuli set consists of 6 second introduction screens, which frame video clips as Real People or Actors, followed by 6 second video clips. In line with Bradley & P.J. Lang, (2007), skin conductance reactions are not expected to differ for the reading (imagery) versus watching

(perception) tasks, or based on valence. Specifically, media realism is hypothesized to have the following effects on arousal:

H1. Reading and watching high arousal content with strong survival implications

(e.g. violence, sexual themes) will elicit greater arousal than reading and

watching content without direct survival associations, as indexed by skin

conductance (H1a) and self-reported arousal (H1b).

H2. Reading and watching high arousal content framed as real people will elicit

greater arousal than reading and watching equivalent content framed as actors,

as indexed by skin conductance (H2a) and self-reported arousal (H2b).

H3. Reading and watching low arousal content framed as real people will elicit

greater arousal than reading equivalent content framed as actors, as indexed

by skin conductance (H3a) and self-reported arousal (H3b).

While the skin conductance response indexes preparation for action in reading and perception tasks, the cardiac response differs in reading and perception tasks. Lacey

(1967) first observed that sensory intake (perception of external stimuli) was associated with cardiac deceleration, whereas mentation (internal processing) was associated with acceleration. Consistent with this, heart rate acceleration is expected during the reading

(imagery) task and heart rate deceleration during the video viewing task (perception).

According to Bradley and Lang (2007, p. 589), “heart rate acceleration during imagery varies most consistently with stimulus arousal – increasing for emotionally arousing

(either pleasant or unpleasant) images (Bradley & Lang, 2007).” Thus, heart rate acceleration is expected to increase in response to reading high arousal content, as compared to low arousal content.

H4. Reading high arousal content will result in greater heart rate acceleration than

low arousal content.

In addition, expect heart rate acceleration is expected to increase in response to reading content labeled Actors, which will involve greater cognitive effort to encode the source and to discount information from memory, as compared to reading content labeled

Real People.

H5. Reading content labeled Actors will produce greater heart rate acceleration

than reading equivalent content labeled Real People.

The cardiac response during picture and film viewing typically involves cardiac deceleration (e.g. Lang et al., 1993; Palomba et al., 2000; cited in Bradley & P.J. Lang,

2007), indicating increased parasympathetic control associated with a stance of heightened attention and sensory intake (A. Lang, 2009). In line with these findings, expect overall heart rate deceleration is expected for viewing film clips.

A major feature of the psychological state produced by media perceived as real is a lack of awareness of the representational medium. Physiological responses are multiply determined. When viewing video clips labeled Real People, perceptually engaging video content is expected to produce deceleration, while an awareness of the representational medium is expected to involve mentation and sensory rejection, which would produce heart rate acceleration. Thus, video clips labeled Real People are hypothesized to result in stronger heart rate deceleration reflecting consistent increased sensory intake of content with potentially self-relevant consequences.

Although some of the highly-arousing video clips in the present stimuli set involve erotica, and valence has been shown to affect heart rate, consistent with the hypothesis of

63 increased sensory intake for information that is pertinent to survival, highly arousing appetitive video clips are expected to elicit greater cardiac deceleration than low arousal clips (Bradley et al., 2001a; cited in Bradley & P.J. Lang, 2007). Video content is held constant, and only the perception that content represents Real People versus Actors is manipulated. By examining low and high arousal content categories separately, this study attempts to tease out media realism effects on psychological processing and to examine possible boundary conditions due to content.

H6. Watching high arousal content will result in greater heart rate deceleration

than low arousal content, indicating a stance of heightened sensory intake.

H7. Watching high arousal and low arousal content labeled Real People will

result in greater heart rate deceleration than equivalent content labeled Actors,

indicating heightened attention and sensory intake for Real People.

Media Realism and Cognitive Effort. The lack of psychological presence has been characterized as an analytical and critical mindset in which the media user is aware of the mediated nature of the experience. Awareness of the mediated nature of the experience is hypothesized to involve increased cognitive operations, which will result in greater sensory rejection and contextual memory of cognitive effort, as compared to processing equivalent video clips perceived as Real People.

Since the heart is dually enervated by sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, heart rate does not provide a reliable index of parasympathetic influence. Parasympathetic influence over the heart is mediated by the vagus nerve, which lowers heart rate by releasing acetylcholine. According to polyvagal theory (Porges, 2007) and the neurovisceral integration model (Thayer & Lane, 2000), the vagus nerve provides the capacity

64 to quickly adjust parasympathetic influence over the heart in order to foster attentional engagement or disengagement with the sensory environment. In challenging or threatening situations, the vagal brake is rapidly withdrawn to support disengagement with the sensory environment. Vagal withdrawal facilitates sympathetic dominance in support of increased metabolic output, enabling rapid response to a situation and/or to meet metabolic demands generated by brain activity during increased mental effort

(Kramer & Weber, 2000). Vagal withdrawal has been shown across several studies to be sensitive to cognitive processing demands and to provide a reliable index of cognitive load (Scerbo et al., 2001).

Assuming normal respiration rates, vagally-mediated parasympathetic influence over heart rate can be indexed by measuring respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). RSA is the rhythmic oscillation in heart rate produced by breathing. “Breathing air into the lungs temporarily gates off the influence of the parasympathetic influence on heart rate, producing a heart rate increase (see Berntson, Cacioppo, & Quigley, 1993). Breathing air out of the lungs reinstates parasympathetic influence on heart rate, resulting in a heart rate decrease,” (Bernardi, Porta, Gabutti, Spicuzza, & Sleight, 2001); (Berntson,

Cacioppo, & Quigley, 1993). Thus, strong parasympathetic control blocked by breathing would produce relatively large heart rate increases, followed by relatively large decreases upon breathing out, resulting in greater heart rate variance. Weak parasympathetic control would result in smaller heart rate increases and decreases associated with the respiration cycle. During tasks requiring increased cognitive effort, one might expect vagal withdrawal, indicated by decreases in RSA.

H8. . Encoding source information while processing sensory information will

increase cognitive workload, resulting in RSA decreases for content labeled

Actors.

Media Realism and Memory. Previous research suggests a complex relationship between media realism and memory. As shown in Figure 1, factors shown to affect this relationship include: Individual factors (cognitive resources, expectations, motivations, need for cognition), Message factors (content, form, and complexity). Past research on the relationship between media realism and learning must be considered in terms of these factors. When message and individual factors are controlled, the evidence suggests that media realism can increase memory for information portrayed in media.

Perceiving a computer-generated instructor as operated by a real person (avatar) versus a computer script (agent) has been shown to increase learning and transfer of material taught by the instructor (Chen, Shohamy, Ross, Reeves, & Wagner, 2009; Okita,

Bailenson, & Schwartz, 2008). Media violence perceived as increasingly realistic has been shown to increase aggressive behavior measured immediately after exposure among adults, (Berkowitz & Alioto, 1973; Geen, 1975; Geen & Rakosky, 1973; Thomas & Tell,

1974) as well as children (Atkin, 1983; Feshbach, 1972; Sawin, 1981). It is unclear from these findings whether arousal actually improves memory encoding, or whether generalized arousal was confounded with realism in the between-subjects design, and increased the likelihood of aggressive behaviors.

A large body of evidence suggests that emotionally arousing stimuli are generally remembered better than neutral stimuli (for reviews see Hamann, 2001; LeDoux, 2000;

Reisberg & Hertel, 2004). Emotionally arousing events activate physiological changes

66 that have been shown to facilitate memory (Libkuman, Stabler, & Otani, 2004). Memory enhancing effects of arousal are theorized to promote survival by increasing the probability that information significant for survival is remembered. Additional research suggests that psychological processing of content perceived as real requires cognitive effort, while perceiving content as unreal involves critical processing. Highly transported readers were less likely to counter-argue story claims and more likely to show beliefs consonant with story conclusions (Green & Brock, 2000).

In the present study, message factors are kept constant by reversing labels for half the participants. Individual factors are controlled for by examining within-subject changes in psychological processing. Thus, only the perception of realism is manipulated within- subjects in order to examine whether media realism affects memory encoding processes.

Media realism may enhance memory via two mechanisms: physiological arousal, and source discounting for information in clips labeled Actors. In the present study, the aim is to compare whether cognitive effort or arousal better explain the variance in memory.

H9. To the extent that media realism increases arousal (H1), enhanced memory is

expected for information perceived as real.

H10. To the extent that awareness of the mediated nature of the presentation

increases mentation (H5, H7, H8), presumably to encode the source and

discount information from memory, information labeled Actors is

hypothesized to be remembered less.

Memory for information in the longer presentation will have more time to decay over the length of the stimulus presentation. Varying the length of the stimulus presentation provides a check on the reliability and validity of the memory measurement

67 tool. In addition, the length of the stimulus presentation is varied in order to test the robustness of media realism effects over the course of multiple messages.

H11. Memory performance will be greater for information in the shorter

stimulus presentation due to recency effects (H11).

2.1.2. Methods

Stimuli. 80 six-second video clips that could plausibly be labeled as Real People or

Actors were selected from obscure fictional and documentary films. Video clips were selected to exclude formal and content features frequently associated with reality and fantasy genres. The features of each category are identified in Table 1. All video clips included people. All clips were six seconds to preserve ambiguity. Beyond six seconds, genre cues often revealed the clip’s origin from a reality or fantasy source. In addition, six-seconds was deemed sufficient to elicit psycho-physiological responses to media content features (e.g. Lang, et al. 1998). Preceding each six-second clip, a six-second title screen featured the headline “Real People” or “Actors,” in a large white font centered on a black background. Below the headline, a one-sentence description emphasized whether the clip showed actual events and people or constructed scenes. For example, “REAL

PEOPLE. This clip shows a woman crying” versus “ACTORS. This scene from a movie shows an actress pretending to cry.” Half the clips contained high arousal content depicting survival threats and opportunities, such as violence, death, and erotica, and half the clips depicted low arousal content, with no direct survival implications, such as funerals, people talking, or an elderly man reading to children.

Clips were pre-tested with a separate set of participants (N = 30) to assess the emotional impact of the clip and to check experimental labels’ manipulation of belief.

Participants rated each clip using the nine-point SAM (self-assessment manikin) scale

(Lang, 1980), which is largely culture-free and has assessments of valence and arousal shown to correlate (r=.9 and above) with semantic differential scales that measure the same dimensions (Lang et al., 1997). In addition, participants rated the extent to which they believed the experimental label preceding each clip using a five-point scale ranging from “100% belief” to “0% disbelief.” Participants believed experimental labels at the

75% level, and there was no significant difference in participants’ belief for labels of

Real People versus Actors (Real People M = 3.99, SD = .43; Actors M = 4.00, SD = .45; t

= -0.34, df = 57, p = .74). A median-split was performed on SAM ratings to divide clips into 2 categories of emotional content: low arousal-neutral and high arousal-negative.

Arousal and valence pre-test ratings for the video stimuli are presented in Table 2. The final stimulus set was 45 minutes. To examine the effect of the length of the stimulus presentation, a 23 minute version of the stimuli consisting of clips randomly selected from high and low arousal content categories was also examined. Realism effects are expected to be robust across two different lengths of stimulus presentation.

Procedure. Thirty two undergraduates (17 male, 15 female) from a large California university participated in the study. To test duration of the effect, 16 participants viewed a 23 minute presentation of 40 clips, and 16 participants viewed a 45 minute presentation of 80 clips. To examine within-subject differences in response to Real People versus

Actors, each subject saw an equal number of high and low arousal clips (half labeled Real

People, half labeled Actors) in blocks of 5 or 10 clips, alternating between Real People

69 and Actors. Video clips labeled “Real People” for half the participants were labeled

“Actors” for the other half, and vice versa. Thus, participants viewed identical video clip content, and the only manipulation was their belief that the clip represented Real People or Actors. Clips were rotated in a latin-square design to control for order effects.

Table 2. Pre-testing stimuli: Self-reported valence, arousal and belief of labels. Stimuli Pre-test Ratings (M, SD, N = 30) SAM Valence SAM Arousal Belief of Label* Block- Description Real Fiction Real Fiction Real Fiction (Group labels) 3.994, 4.510, 3.229, 2.022, 3.863, 3.870, 1 – Low-Negative .842 .408 .599 .447 .699 .505 (A = Real, B = Fiction) 5.527, 2.011, 2.922, 3.886, 4.080, 2 – Low-Positive 5.4, .508 .787 .420 .307 .351 .383 (A = Fiction, B = Real) 5.929, 5.6, 3.882, 4.095, 4.067, 3 – Low-Positive 2.5, .258 .559 .393 .846 .391 .419 (A = Real, B = Fiction) 4.833, 4.735, 2.9, 3.735, 3.840, 4.040, 4 – Low-Neutral 1.29 1.708 .588 .854 .471 .517 (A = Fiction, B = Real) 5.564, 5.456, 5.418, 3.178, 4.05, 3.88, 5 – High – Positive .711 .520 .902 .657 .436 .298 (A = Real, B = Fiction) 3.867, 3.665, 3.189, 3.829, 3.905, 6 – High – Negative 4.9, .505 .813 .640 .432 .434 .432 (A = Fiction, B = Real) 2.618, 3.5, 5.135, 3.378, 4.025, 3.932, 7 – High – Negative .406 .410 .953 .506 .343 .473 (A = Real, B = Fiction) 2.521, 2.941, 4.533, 5.894, 4.048, 4.156, 8 – High – Negative .446 .459 .573 1.07 .451 .411 (A = Fiction, B = Real) 4.341, 4.492, 3.787, 3.566, 3.954, 3.992, Average .697 .666 .664 .576 .447 .430

* Averaged response to two questions: “How much do you believe the clip label?” and “How much do you think others would believe the clip label?” (5 = 100% belief, 1 = 0% belief)

Participants provided informed consent upon entering the laboratory and sat at a desk approximately eight feet from the projection screen. The experimenter attached the physiological sensors on the non-dominant hand, and instructed participants to remain as still as possible during the experiment. Participants were instructed to read each title

70 screen, watch the clip, and then upon viewing an orange dot on the screen, to rate the clip on the SAM scale in terms of how the video made them feel. Participants watched video clips for approximately 23 minutes for the 40 clip set, and 45 minutes for the 80 clip set.

Video clips were projected on a 120 inch screen in a darkened room. A 10 second baseline preceded each clip, during which a black screen was shown, followed by the 6 second title screen labeling the clip as “Real People” or “Actors.” Following each clip, saw an orange dot on the screen for 12 seconds, during which they rated the clip using the

9-point Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) scale (Lang, 1980). Physiological data collected during the SAM survey was not used in the analysis. After viewing the stimuli, physiological sensors were removed, and participants then completed a survey of media use on a laptop computer. The media use survey was intended as a distractor task before the memory test and lasted approximately 20 minutes. On the same laptop computer, participants then took a multiple choice memory test for information contained in the video clips.

Physiological Recording. Physiological signals were recorded using a Thought

Technology ProComp Infiniti module linked to a PC computer. Heart rate was recorded using a blood volume pulse detection sensor placed on the index finger. Skin conductance was recorded in micro Seimens (uS) using standard Ag/AgCl electrodes placed on the volar surface phalange region of the subject’s non-dominant hand. The heart rate signal was sampled at a rate of 2058 times per second, and skin conductance at 256 times per second. The data were converted offline to 8 samples per second for statistical analysis.

Artifacts were defined as values outside 2 standard deviations for each individual and replaced with the mean of the surrounding values. Baseline scores for heart rate and skin

71 conductance levels were calculated as the average of the 5-sec period preceding each clip introduction. Baseline scores were subtracted from each time-point during the stimulus presentation to produce change scores for statistical analyses. Following the recommendation of (Dawson, Schell, & Filion, 2000), skin conductance scores were converted to percent change from baseline to reflect the magnitude of deviation from each individual’s unique baseline. Skin conductance and heart rate measures were averaged across participants at each of 96 time points for each of four conditions: Real

People-High Arousal, Actors-High-Arousal, Real People-Low Arousal, and Actors-Low

Arousal.

As artifacts can bias RSA estimates, inter-beat-interval (IBI) heart rate data was hand corrected for artifacts according to the guidelines discussed in Berntson et al. (1997).

RSA statistics were calculated using CMETX, a freely available program for measuring heart rate variability (Allen, Chambers, & Towers, 2007). An RSA statistic was calculated for each 10 second baseline and each 12 second period during which a title screen and clip were shown. RSA change was calculated by subtracting the baseline RSA statistic from the RSA statistic for the title screen and video clip. Each IBI data segment also included a twelve second buffer immediately preceding and following the segment of interest, although the buffer is not included in the RSA statistic. CMetX assumes a normal respiration rate of 1 breath every 8 – 10 seconds. The title screen and video clip were considered together in order to provide sufficient data for at least 1 respiration cycle, with padding on both sides (12 seconds before and 12 seconds after).

Recognition Memory The memory quiz contained questions about audio and visual details sampled equally from each block, with 16 questions (4 questions per condition)

72 for participants in the 40 clip presentation condition, and 40 questions (10 questions per condition) for the 80 clip presentation condition. Memory items are presented in the

Appendix. Each question had 5 multiple-choice answers, and participants could only choose one answer per question. After completing the memory quiz, participants were debriefed and received course credit and a gift certificate to an online bookstore.

2.1.3. Results

Self-reported Arousal and Valence. To examine the effects of reality labels and clip content on self-reported arousal and valence, two repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted: 2 Content (high arousal, low arousal) x 2 Reality Label (real people, actors) as within-subject factors, and 2 stimulus duration (40 clips, 80 clips) entered as a between subjects factor. Table 3 presents descriptive statistics of arousal and valence ratings for each stimulus condition. Consistent with pre-testing and H1b, high arousal content

2 increased self-reported arousal, F (1, 30) = 87.52, p < .00, p = .75; high arousal content

M = 4.34, SE = .30; low arousal content, M = 2.88, SE = .24. Supporting H2b and H2c,

2 labels of Real People increased self-reported arousal, F (1, 30) = 8.04, p = .01, p = .21,

Real People M = 3.75, SE = .27, Actors M = 3.46, SE = .26. The interaction between reality labels and content was not significant. The duration of clip presentation did not have a significant effect on self-reported arousal, and did not interact significantly with content or label. The interaction term for duration x label x content approached

2 significance, F (1, 30) = 4.19, p = .05, p = .12, indicating that self-reported arousal did not differ according to reality label for high arousal content during the longer clip set.

Table 3. Descriptive statistics for Label (Real People) x Content (High, Low arousal) x Stimulus Duration (40 clips, 80 clips) effects on self-reported arousal and valence.

SAM Valence (M, SE) SAM Arousal (M, SE)

High Arousal Low Arousal High Arousal Low Arousal Content Content Content Content

Duration Real Fiction Real Fiction Real Fiction Real Fiction 40 clips 4.388, 4.850, 4.794, 4.906, 4.338, 3.656, 2.744, 2.494, (23 min) .173 .161 .106 .096 .440 .456 .343 .333 80 clips 3.668, 3.872, 5.034, 5.068, 4.648, 4.706, 3.272, 2.994, (47 min) .173 .161 .106 .096 .440 .456 .343 .333

4.028, 4.361, 4.914, 4.987, 4.493, 4.181, 3.008, 2.744, Avg. .122 .114 .075 .068 .311 .322 .243 .235

Content and label had significant main effects on self-reported valence. Consistent with pre-testing, low arousal clips were more positive than high arousal clips, F (1, 30) =

2 123.13, p < .00, p = .80; low arousal content M = 4.95, SE = .07, high arousal content M

= 4.19, SE = .08. Clips were rated as more positive when labeled Actors, F (1, 30) = 5.58,

2 p = .03, p = .16, Real People M = 4.47, SE = .08, Actors M = 4.67, SE = .08. The duration of the stimulus had a significant effect on valence ratings of clips, F (1, 30) =

2 5.77, p = .02, p = .16. Clips in the shorter presentation received more positive ratings,

40 clips M = 4.73, SE = .10, 80 clips M = 4.41, SE = .10. The interaction between content and stimulus duration demonstrated content had a stronger effect on valence ratings

2 during the longer presentation, F (1, 30) = 59.33, p = .00, p = .66, 80 clips High Arousal

M = 3.77, SE = .12, 80 clips Low Arousal M = 5.05, SE = .09, 40 clips High Arousal M =

4.62, SE = .12, 40 clips Low Arousal M = 4.85, SE = .09. The interaction terms for label x content, duration x label, and duration x label x content were not significant.

Skin Conductance Response. To test H1a, H2a and H3a, two 2 (Real People, Actors) x 2 (High arousal, Low arousal) x 96 (Time) x 2 (40 clips, 80 clips) repeated measures

74 analysis of variance (ANOVA) were conducted. The within-subjects factors were:

Reality Label (Real People, Actors), Content (High arousal, Low arousal), and Time (12 seconds sampled at 8 Hz). The between subjects factor was stimulus duration (40 clips,

80 clips). The Huynh-Feldt correction was applied to all degrees of freedom from within- subjects factors in which the assumption of sphericity was violated. Baselines were calculated by averaging five seconds of baseline data immediately preceding each video clip, allowing 5 seconds for the effect of the previous clip to decay. Each score after baseline was converted to a percent increase or decrease from baseline ((score- baseline)*100/baseline), reflecting the magnitude of deviation from that individual’s unique baseline.Figure 2. Skin conductance response to video clips labeled Real People vs.

Actors

Figure 2 shows resulting skin conductance levels as participants viewed the title screen (seconds 0-6) and video (seconds 6-12). Time approached a significant effect, F

2 (1.745, 52.353) = 3.278, p = .052, p = .098, indicating a trend of decreasing arousal over the course of each clip presentation.

In support of H1a, the interaction between Content and Time had a significant effect

2 in the predicted direction, F (1.671, 50.132) = 4.974, p = .015, p = .142, indicating that skin conductance maintained the highest levels for high arousal content.

Figure 2. Skin conductance responses to video clips labeled Real People vs. Actors Error bars represent 2SE 2.0% Real People - High Arousal 1.5% Actors - High Arousal 1.0% Real People - Low Arousal Actors - Low Arousal 0.5%

0.0% 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 -0.5%

-1.0%

-1.5%

-2.0%

Percent Change in SkinConductance (ms) -2.5% Title Screen (6 sec) Video Clip (6 sec) -3.0% Time (sec)

In support for H2a, the interaction between Reality Label and Time approached significance, indicating a trend in which clips labeled Real People increased skin

2 conductance levels over time, F (2.318, 69.549) = 2.564, p = .076, p = .079. In support of H2a, the interaction between Reality Label and Arousal was significant, F (1, 30) =

2 6.626, p = .015, p = .181. As Figure 2 indicates, highly arousing content labeled as Real

People resulted in increased skin conductance responses compared to the equivalent content labeled as Actors (M = -0.20, SE = 0.40; M = -1.20, SE = 0.30, respectively).

However, skin conductance responses to low-arousal content labeled as Real People versus Actors did not differ significantly (M = -1.0, SE = 0.40; M = -0.90, SE = 0.40, respectively). In support of H2a, the three-way interaction for Reality Label, Arousal and

2 Time was significant, F (2.575, 77.261) = 3.112, p = .038, p = .094, indicating that skin

76 conductance maintained highest levels over time for highly arousing content labeled Real

People.

None of the effects reported above differed based on the duration of the stimulus

2 presentation: Label x Stimulus Duration, F (1, 30) = .000, p = .999, p = .000, Content x

2 Stimulus Duration, F (1, 30) = 1.330, p = .258, p = .042, Time x Stimulus Duration, F

2 (1.745, 52.353) = .201, p = .789, p = .007, Label x Content x Stimulus Duration, F (1,

2 30) = 1.360, p = .253, p = .043, Label x Time x Stimulus Duration, F (2.318, 69.549) =

2 .242, p = .817, p = .008, Content x Time x Stimulus Duration, F (1.671, 50.132) =

2 1.234, p = .294, p = .040, and Label x Content x Time x Stimulus Duration, F (2.575,

2 77.261) = 1.765, p = .168, p = .056. There were no significant main effects on skin

2 conductance level due to Reality Label, F (1, 30) = 2.245, p = .144, p = .070, Content, F

2 2 (1, 30) = .812, p = .375, p = .026, or Duration, F (1, 30) = .362, p = .552, p = .012.

Heart Rate. To test the effect of media realism on heart rate, heart rate (BPM) during reading and watching were each analyzed with a 2 (Real People, Actors) x 2 (High arousal, Low arousal) x 48 (Time) x 2 (40 clips, 80 clips) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). The within-subjects factors were Label (Real People, Actors),

Content (High arousal, Low arousal), and Time (12 seconds sampled at 8 Hz), and

Stimulus Duration was entered as a between subjects factor (40 clips, 80 clips). The

Huynh-Feldt correction was applied to all degrees of freedom from within-subjects factors in which the assumption of sphericity was violated. Baselines were calculated by averaging five seconds of baseline data immediately preceding each video clip, allowing

5 seconds for the effect of the previous clip to decay.

2 Content did not have a main effect on heart rate, F (1,30) = .983, p =.329, p = .032, and the interaction between Content and Duration was not significant, F (1,30) = .656, p

2 =.424, p = .021. Label did not have a significant main effect on heart rate, F (1,30) =

2 .652, p =.426, p = .021. However, the Label x Duration effect was significant, F (1,30)

2 = 4.719, p =.038, p = .136, indicating that labels of Real People increased heart rate for the shorter stimulus presentation, Real People M = -1.059, SE = .418, Actors M = -1.800,

SE = .487, whereas for the longer stimulus presentation, labels of Real People showed a non-significant trend of decreasing heart rate, Real People M = -3.687, SE = .432, Actors

M = -3.310, SE = .503. Time showed a significant main effect, F (3.l745, 112.346) =

2 38.467, p =.000, p = .562, indicating that heart rate decreased over the course of each clip presentation. The significant interaction between Time and Duration indicated that the longer stimulus presentation of 80 clips increased this effect, F (3.l745, 112.346) =

2 3.720, p =.008, p = .110. The Label x Content interaction had no significant effect on

2 heart rate, F (1,30) = .186, p =.670, p = .006, and this effect did not change based on

2 Stimulus Duration, F (1,30) = .003, p =.955, p = .000. Label x Time was not significant,

2 F (6.476, 194.274) = 1.094, p =.368, p = .035, and did not change based on Stimulus

2 Duration, F (6.476, 194.274) = .785, p =.592, p = .025. Content x Time was not

2 significant, F (6.224, 186.720) = .372, p =.901, p = .012, and did not change based on

2 Stimulus Duration, F (6.224, 186.720) = .998, p =.429, p = .032. Label x Content x

2 Time was not significant, F (4.928, 147.840) = .702, p =.620, p = .023, and did not

2 change based on Stimulus Duration, F (4.928, 147.840) = .917, p =.471, p = .030.

Heart Rate Variability. To test the effect of media realism on heart rate variability,

RSA data was analyzed with a 2 (Real People, Actors) x 2 (High, arousal, Low arousal) x

2 (40 clips, 80 clips) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). The within subjects factors were Label (Real People, Actors), Content (High arousal, Low arousal), and the between subjects factor was Stimulus Duration (40 clips, 80 clips). Figure 3

RSA Reactivity for Video Cilps Labeled Real People vs. Actors 0.3

0.2

0.1

-0.1

-0.2

RSA change RSA)(log from change baseline RSA -0.3 Actors Real Actors Real Real Actors Low High High People Low People People Arousal Arousal Arousal High Arousal Low Arousal Arousal

Figure 3. RSA reactivity for video clips labeled Real People versus Actors shows resulting changes in RSA from baseline. Content had a significant effect on heart

2 rate variability F(1, 30) = 13.840, p = .001, p = .316. Low arousal content increased heart rate variability levels (RSA) from baseline, (M = .120, SE = .075), whereas high arousal content decreased heart rate variability levels (RSA) from baseline (M = -.104, SE

= .070). This effect did not change based on the duration of the stimulus, F(1, 30) =

2 1.158, p = .291, p = .037. Labels had a significant main effect on heart rate variability,

2 F(1, 30) = 6.135, p = .019, p = .170. Clips decreased heart rate variability (RSA) from baseline when labeled Actors (M = -.057, SE = .077). Clips increased heart rate variability (RSA) levels from baseline when labeled Real People (M = .073, SE = .065).

The main effect of label did not change based on the duration of the stimulus, F(1, 30) =

2 .000, p = .992, p = .000. The interaction between Label and Arousal was not significant

2 F (1, 15) = .430, p = .517, p = .014, and did not change based on the duration of the

2 stimulus, F(1, 30) = .190, p = .666, p = .01.

Recognition Memory. To test the effect of media realism on memory, the percentage of items correct on a multiple-choice memory test was analyzed with a 2 (Real People,

Actors) x 2 (High, arousal, Low arousal) x 2 (40 clips, 80 clips) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). The within subjects factors were Reality Label (Real

People, Actors), Content (High arousal, Low arousal), and the between subjects factor was Stimulus Duration (40 clips, 80 clips). Figure 4 shows percentage correct scores for the memory quiz based on audio-visual information presented in the clips. As each question contained 5 multiple choice items, participants would be expected to score 20% by chance.

Recognition Memory for Video Clips Labeled Real People vs. Actors Error bars represent 2SE 0.65 0.6 0.55 0.5 0.45 0.4 0.35 0.3

Percent Correct Percent 0.25 0.2 Actors Real People Actors Real People 40 clips 80 clips High ArousalHigh Arousal Low Arousal Low Arousal

Figure 4. Recognition memory for video clips labeled Real People vs. Actors.

In support of H9, the interaction between Label and Content had a significant effect

2 on recognition memory, F(1, 30) = 4.250, p = .048, p = .124, indicating better recognition memory for high arousal clips labeled Real People M = .575, SE = .039, compared to high arousal clips labeled Actors M = .489, SE = .036. Follow-up paired- sample t-tests for high arousal clips showed increased recognition memory for labels of

Real People versus Actors, (t = 2.161, df = 31, p = .039). Contrary to H10, recognition memory for low arousal content did not differ based on labels of Real People versus

Actors, t = .934, df = 31, p = .353; M = .521, SE = .029, M = .554, SE = .023, respectively.

As expected (H11), Stimulus Duration had a significant effect on recognition memory. Participants showed recognition memory for clips in the shorter (23 minute)

2 presentation than the longer (45 minute) presentation, F(1, 30) = 5.407, p = .027, p =

.153, M = .585, SE = .031, M = .484, SE = .031.

The Label x Content x Stimulus Duration interaction term was non-significant, F(1,

2 30) = .394, p = .535, p = .013, indicating the Label x Content interaction did not change based on the duration of the stimulus. Label did not have a significant main effect on

2 recognition memory, F(1, 30) = 1.144, p = .293, p = .037, Real People M = .548, SE =

.028, Actors M = .521, SE = .022, and this did not change based on the duration of the

2 stimulus, Label x Duration F(1, 30) = .036, p = .852, p = .001. Content did not have a

2 significant effect on recognition memory, F(1, 30) = .043, p = .838, p = .001, Real

People M = .538, SE = .020, Actors M = .532, SE = .031, and this did not change based

2 on the duration of the stimulus, Content x Duration F(1, 30) = .874, p = .357, p = .028.

2.1.4. Discussion

The present study provides new insights into psychological mechanisms underlying media realism effects on emotion and memory. As expected, content with survival implications (e.g. threats, mutilations, and erotica) elicited increased skin conductance levels over time and self-reported arousal. Self-reported valence ratings indicated that high arousal clips were more negative than low arousal clips, also replicating pre-test results. The findings indicate that content perceived as real and depicting significant survival implications elicits greater motivation activation and preparation for action.

When content does not depict strong survival implications, media realism had no effect on motivation activation, or preparation for action, as indicated by skin conductance levels. However, self-reported arousal and valence ratings indicated that the subjective emotional experience of viewing real people was more intense and negative than viewing

Actors for both high and low arousal content. The data also indicate that measuring motivation activation, as indexed by self-reported arousal and sympathetic nervous system activity, can provide a useful indirect measure of the perception of media realism.

Furthermore, the effect of media realism on motivation activation for content depicting survival implications lasted over the course of a 23 minute (40 clips) and 45 minute (80 clips) presentation.

Content and label had no effect on heart rate. Although dominated by parasympathetic activity, heart rate is a confounded measure reflecting both parasympathetic and sympathetic influences. In this case, it seems that increased sympathetic activity and parasympathetic activity may have canceled out heart rate effects. Labels of Real People had a simultaneous arousing and negative quality. SAM

82 ratings indicated labels of Real People increased arousal and decreased valence. High arousal content was also arousing and slightly negative. Sympathetic arousal may have contributed to heart rate acceleration for high arousal and real content, while the negative valence of the content may have contributed to parasympathetically mediated heart rate deceleration (e.g. Lang & Friestad, 1993). In addition, the medium of film likely contributed to heart rate deceleration over time (Simons, Detenber, Reiss, & Shults, 2000;

Simons, Detenber, Roedema, & Reiss, 1999).

Labels of Actors produced lower RSA levels, while labels of Real People increased

RSA levels. RSA results suggest that clips labeled Actors increase cognitive workload

Consistent with psychological states conceptualized by low involvement, participants processed content labeled as Actors analytically, with awareness of the mediated nature of the presentation. These data suggest that media perceived as more real are less effortful to process (Shapiro & Lang, 1991).

Highly arousing negative content resulted in vagal withdrawal as indexed by decreased RSA. This response facilitates sympathetically mediated heart rate acceleration indicating increased mentation. Low-arousal, positive content resulted in increased vagal control, indexed by increased RSA, indicating a parasympathetic response supporting resting and digestion, and signaling safety and low distress.

Importantly, the sympathetic response is slower than parasympathetic modulation of the heart, so skin conductance responses may index emotional responses prior to the conscious awareness of emotion (Bechara, Damasio, & Tranel, 1997).

A potential limitation of the heart rate variability analyses is that respiration rate was not considered, and rate of breathing is assumed rather than measured. However, the

83 importance of controlling for respiration rate and depth in heart rate variability analyses is disputed (Denver, Reed, & Porges, 2007; Grossman & Taylor, 2007). Given the lack of physical movement in the present study, it is arguable whether controlling for respiration rate and depth would change the results.

Content depicting significant survival implications was remembered better when labeled as Real People, presumably due to its increased emotional intensity. However, labels of Real People did not improve memory for clips depicting low arousal content.

These data suggest that reality effects on memory and learning could be mediated by the arousing quality of media content. Although the present data showed that highly arousing content framed as Real People versus Actors is remembered better, the mechanism explaining why memory is better should be clarified in future research. Contrary to the premise of H6, high arousal content depicting significant survival implications did not have a main effect of enhancing recognition memory. One explanation is that the memory quiz provided an insensitive measure of memory enhanced by arousal, as some questions focused on details (e.g. the number of people in a scene, or the hair color of a character) rather than more central themes (e.g., what symptoms does the patient have, or how was the character’s friend killed). Research has shown that arousal enhances memory for central as opposed to peripheral information (Kern, Libkuman, Otani, & Holmes, 2005).

An alternative explanation for the results is that highly arousing content was more memorable when labeled as Real People because it was also perceived as atypical

(Shapiro & Fox, 2002), whereas such sensational content might seem more typical when considered fictional.

As outlined in Figure 1, a complex interaction of factors influence perceptions of media as more or less real, including formal and content features of the media, expectations about media presentations, information processing abilities, and motivations for using media. Importantly, content was held constant across conditions, so it was only the labels and the presumed beliefs about viewing real people or actors that caused effects on psycho-physiological processes. Thus, this experiment shows effects on physiological processes when the mere belief that media are real is artificially induced. A limitation of the present research is the artificial nature of the experimental context and short duration of the six-second video clips. In the real world, people do not necessarily consider the reality status of media, and even when they do, reality judgments can change on a moment to moment basis (Shapiro & Chock, 2004). The six-second clips also may not have allowed sufficient time for individuals to engage in narrative transportation, experiencing strong emotions and motivations, even when viewing media labeled as fictional in which they know the events in the story are not real. To better understand narrative engagement in naturalistic media contexts, future research should examine longer media stimuli, linking online realism judgments and stimulus features that signal reality with arousal, regulation and cognitive effort.

The present results were obtained using video stimuli, but could be further tested in other media contexts, such as computer-mediated-communication versus human computer interaction, live versus scripted media, factual versus fictional text and pictures.

Results of the present study are expected to generalize to situations in which individuals experience the psychological, subjective state of presence “in which virtual objects are experienced as actual objects” (Lee, 2004), and in which viewers perceive self-relevant

85 consequences from virtual objects. Different self-relevant consequences implied by media portrayals are expected to influence physiological and emotional responses to and perceptions of reality versus fantasy. Symbols perceived as “Real People” are necessarily and directly linked to real world referents and imply different consequences than symbols perceived as “Actors” and that are not necessarily or directly linked to real world referents. However, it remains unclear whether or how viewers consciously or unconsciously incorporate implied consequences into emotional responses; thus, it is important to clarify how different consequences implied by symbols and real life might influence emotional responses and behaviors. Future research might consider whether emotional responses induced by the perception of realism rely on the perception of self- relevant consequences, and whether survival implications are consciously or unconsciously assessed as part of this process.

2.2. Study 2. Media Realism Effects on Memory and Self-reported Typicality,

Identification and Utility

Participants (N = 62) viewed 80 video clips, containing highly arousing content and neutral content. As in Experiment 1, half of the video clips were labeled Real People, and half were labeled Actors. Labels were reversed for half the participants to control for content. Participants rated each video clip on scales of Typicality, Involvement and

Utility. Video clips labeled as Real People were reported as significantly more Typical,

Involving, and Useful for survival. High arousal video clips were rated as significantly more Involving and Useful, and less Typical than low arousal clips. 24 hours later, participants completed an online survey assessing free recall and recognition memory for

86 audio and visual details presented in the clips. Consistent with memory results of

Experiment 1, highly arousing video clips were remembered better when labeled Real

People.

2.2.1. Introduction

Experiment 1 was limited in by a sample size (N = 32), and the recognition memory test may not have sufficiently captured variance in memory. In addition, Experiment 1 measured a memory 15 minutes after the stimulus, and thus does not provide any evidence of that perceived realism produces differences in long term memory, which would likely be necessary to influence attitudes and beliefs as proposed by cultivation theorists. Experiment 2 aimed to test whether video realism effects on memory observed in Experiment 1 would replicate for a larger sample size, using additional free recall measures of memory, and after a delay of 24 hours. Hypothesis 1, predicted that participants would show increased free recall (H1a) and recognition memory (H1b) for low arousal video clips labeled Real People versus Actors 24 hours after exposure.

Hypothesis 2 predicted that participants would show better free recall (H2a) and recognition memory (H2b) for high arousal video clips labeled Real People versus Actors

24 hours after exposure.

Experiment 1also raised important questions about the meaning of the manipulation of Real People versus Actors, and how it relates to previous theoretical constructs of perceived realism. As described in Experiment 1, the manipulation check conducted during pre-testing found that labels of Real People versus Actors produced no differences in participants’ self-reported belief of the labels. As this manipulation check was based

87 on a null finding, Experiment 2 aimed to test whether the manipulation of “Real People” versus “Actors” would produce significant differences in self-reported perceptions, using constructs in line with previous conceptualizations of perceived realism. Specifically,

Experiment 2 study tested whether labels of Real People versus Actors would produce significant differences in self-reported Utility, Typicality, and Involvement of the video clips.

Utility measures the extent to which an individual finds information useful, and as a dimension, has correlated with perceived realism across numerous studies (Busselle &

Greenberg, 2000). Busselle and Greenberg (2000) define Utility as the extent to which information or events observed on television are useful to the viewer in real life. Media content, both fictional and factual, can serve needs to understand or learn about oneself, others, and one’s relationship with one’s environment (McQuail, Blumler, & Brown,

1972; Perse & Courtright, 1993). Viewing for instructional versus entertainment purposes has also been associated with higher levels of perceived realism (Rubin, 1981). A primary task of human survival, for which the human brain likely evolved, is to identify information that can be used to predict self-relevant threats and opportunities. One difference in the manipulation of Real People versus Actors pertains to the fact that Real

People are necessarily tied to events in the real world, while Actors might be tied, but are not necessarily tied to events in the real world. Events that necessarily take place in the real world are potentially more self-relevant than events which do not necessarily have any connection to the real world, and which may or may not be self-relevant. In line with

Reality Monitoring theory (Johnson, 2006; Johnson, 2007), distinguishing between veridical and non veridical sources is an important task. Veridical sources are presumed

88 to help the organism in identifying a relevant threat/opportunity and predicting future self-relevant consequences, whereas non-veridical sources might or might not help in that endeavor. The present study proposes that information perceived as real, and based in external sources might carry an implicit assumption of having greater utility for predicting future self relevant consequences than information based in imagined, internal sources. In this sense, the Utility dimension is intended to test whether information that is perceived to reflect reality is also considered more useful. If survival implications are consciously or unconsciously assessed as part of this process, clips labeled Real People will be perceived as more useful to viewers. Hypothesis 3 (H3) predicted that video clips would be rated as more useful when labeled Real People than when labeled Actors.

Involvement is a key concept in concepts of Transportation and Presence, and represents the extent to which viewers are emotionally and cognitively engaged in the media presentation, and do not take notice of the mediated quality of their experience,

(Witmer & Singer, 1998; Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003). Low involvement is a distant, analytical state in which people are conscious of the mediated nature of the experience

(Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003). Similar to Simulation Theory (Oatley, 1994, 1999),

Involvement theory asserts that emotional responses to a story are produced when media users “enter the world of the text.” This submersion of media users into the world of a narrative is similar to the Identity dimension of perceived realism (Busselle & Greenberg,

2000), which represents the extent to which viewers incorporate media content into their real lives and/or involve themselves with media content. Hypothesis 4 (H4a) predicted that labels of Real People would increase participants’ ratings of Involvement in the video as compared to equivalent clips labeled Actors. Involvement, or the sense of “being there”

89 and submersed in the media portrayal, is hypothesized to increase the perception of self- relevance, which would enhance the perception of utility for survival. Hypothesis 4b

(H4b) predicted that Involvement and Utility ratings would be correlated.

Typicality has been shown to predict approximately half of the variance in perceived realism judgments (Shapiro & Chock, 2003). The present study takes the perspective that the human mind evolved to predict self-relevant consequences, and hence, events in exteneral reality. In line with a statistical processing model of learning (Meltzoff, Kuhl,

Movellan & Sejnowski, 2009), mental prototypes are based on frequencies of events and their associated consequences, with these experiences weighted, perhaps according to self-relevance. In this study, Typicality judgments reflect estimates based on actual frequencies of events in external reality. To test whether expectations are based on experiences in real life which includes media representations, Typicality is assessed after viewing clips labeled as Real People or Actors. Hypothesis 5 (H5) predicted that video clips labeled as Real People will inform the prototypical model, and will be subsequently rated as more Typical than the equivalent clip labeled as Actors. If labels of reality modified the perception of how typical an event was, and the frequency of an event provided a heuristic about the likelihood of encountering this information in the real world, then it is likely that typical information would also be considered useful for survival H5b predicted Typicality and Utility would be correlated

2.2.2. Methods

Participants were undergraduates at a large private university. Participants agreed to participate in a two-part study lasting 1.5 hours over the course of 48 hours. Participants

90 viewed the same 80 video clips that were used in Experiment 1, but this time in groups of

5 – 10 people. Video clips were screened in a darkened theatre on campus on a large screen, (approximately 12 x 10 feet). Upon arrival to the theatre, each participant sat a desk and received a paper-and-pencil survey. The experimenter informed participants that the experiment consisted of two parts, and that the second part required taking an online survey in 24 hours in a quiet and undisturbed location, which would take approximately

30 minutes. Participants were told they were about to watch 80 video clips, each 6 seconds long, lasting approximately 47 minutes in total. Participants were given the following instructions: “After each video clip, you will see an orange dot. When you see the orange dot after each clip, please answer 3 questions about the clip using the four point scale, in which 4 = extremely, 3 = very, 2 = somewhat, and 1 = not at all.” Utility,

Involvement and Typicality were measured for each of the 80 clips with three questions:

Utility of the video clip was measured using the following item: “To what extent is the information useful for understanding yourself, others and/or situations in the real world?”

Involvement is a “fascinated, emotionally and cognitively engaged way of enjoying a presentation” in which viewers “do not take notice of the mediated quality of their experience,” and a key dimension of Presence (Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003). Involvement was measured using the following item: “To what extent could you the see the perspective of the individual(s) shown in the clip?” This item is based on Simulation

Theory (Oatley, 1994, 1999), and measures the perception of mediated information as internal simulation. Like Involvement, (Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003), Simulation Theory describes instances in which individuals “enter the world of the text,” which leads to

91 emotional responses to the story. Simulation Theory states that users project their own memories into the textual information, in order to complete the simulation.

Typicality of the video clip was measured using the following item: “How likely is the information shown to happen in real life?” This is item is derived from previous operationalizations of Typicality, (Shapiro & Chock, 2003; Shapiro & Fox, 2004).

Participants were given the opportunity to practice using the scale items. Participants were asked if they had any questions about the survey items. No participants indicated questions about the survey items. Participants were shown 80 video clips, which were pre-tested to manipulate participants’ belief as to whether the clips showed Real People or Actors, (described in Study 1). Half the video clips were labeled Real People, and half were labeled Actors. Labels were reversed for half the participants to control for content.

Half the video clips contained highly arousing content and neutral content. The order of the video clips was rotated using a Latin square design (described in the Appendix).

Twenty-four hours after viewing the clips, participants completed an online survey.

The survey consisted of sixteen free recall items, and the same 36 recognition memory items used in Experiment 1. The free recall items used text probes derived from title screens of the video clips. Text probes were designed to use as few words as possible while specifying the clip to be recalled. Probes were sampled randomly from the set of video clips not already referenced in the multiple choice recognition memory test. Probes represented the four experimental conditions equally.

Three independent coders blind to the hypothesis of the study coded free recall responses. For each free recall response, coders recorded the number of details correctly remembered. Coders were instructed to count each detail as a unit of information that

92 could be factually verified by watching the video clip. For example, recalling an object that was in a scene and a verifiable quality of that object (i.e. the color, or activity) counted as two details.

2.2.3. Results

62 participants viewed the video clips and completed ratings of Typicality, Utility and

Involvement. Twenty-four hours after exposure, 54 participants completed the online memory survey, yielding an attrition rate of 13%. Inter-coder reliability was .86for the free recall items, using Krippendorff's Alpha reliability estimate. The number of correct details reported by three coders was averaged to produce a single number of details recalled for each item and for each participant. Paired-samples t-tests were conducted to examine the effect of reality labels on recognition and free recall memory, examining low and high arousal content separately. Before testing the proposed hypotheses, statistical analyses were conducted to rule out any confounding effects of order and gender. There were no significant effects of order on any of the dependent measures, nor were there significant effects of gender on any of the dependent measures.

H1. Realism effects on memory for low arousal video content. Hypothesis 1 predicted that participants would show better free recall (H1a) and recognition memory (H1b) for video clips labeled Real People versus Actors 24 hours after exposure. A paired-samples t-test showed that reality labels had no effect free recall for low arousal content, (Real

People M = 9.19, SD = 4.02, Actors M = 9.66, SD = 4.76) . The effect of reality labels on recognition memory approached, but did not reach significance (Real People M = .51, SD

= .18, Actors M = .45, SD = .21; t(53) = 1.73, p =.09). H1 was not supported.

H2. Realism effects on memory for high arousal video content. Hypothesis 2 predicted that participants would show better free recall (H2a) and recognition memory

(H2b) for video clips labeled Real People versus Actors 24 hours after exposure. A paired-samples t-test demonstrated that participants recalled significantly more details from high arousal clips labeled as Real People (M = 12.74, SD = 4.60) versus Actors (M

= 11.37, SD = 4.37), t(53) = 2.36, p < .03. A second paired-samples t-test demonstrated that participants showed better recognition memory for audiovisual details from high arousal clips when labeled as Real People (M = .53, SD = .23) versus Actors (M = .46, SD

= .18), t(53) = 2.14, p < .04. H2 was supported.

H3. Realism effects on Utility. To examine the effect of reality labels on Utility, a 2

(reality label) x 2 (content) repeated measures ANOVA was conducted on mean Utility ratings for each condition. Reality labels had a significant effect on Utility ratings, F(1,

2 61) = 70.03, p < .00, p = .53. Clips were rated as more Useful when labeled Real

People, M = 2.22, SD = .52, than clips when labeled Actors, M = 2.01, SD = .48. This effect did not differ based on content. H3 was supported.

H4. Realism effects on Involvement. To examine the effect of reality labels on

Involvement, a 2 (reality label) x 2 (content) repeated measures ANOVA was conducted on mean Involvement ratings for each condition. Reality labels had a significant effect on

2 Involvement ratings, F(1, 61) = 33.84, p < .00, p = .36. Clips were rated as more

Involving when labeled Real People, M = 2.30, SD = .46, versus Actors, M = 2.16, SD =

.44. This effect did not differ based on content. In support of H4b, Involvement and

Utility were correlated, r = .60, p < .001. H4 was supported.

H5. Realism effects on Typicality. To examine the effect of reality labels on

Typicality, a 2 (reality label) x 2 (content) repeated measures ANOVA was conducted on mean Typicality ratings for each condition. Reality label had a significant effect on

2 Typicality ratings, F(1, 61) = 23.28, p < .00, p = .28. Clips were rated as more Typical when labeled Real People, M = 2.86, SD = .48, versus Actors, M = 2.71, SD = .50. This effect did not differ based on content. H5a was supported. In support of H5b, Typicality and Utility were correlated, r = .30, p < .02. In support of H5c, Typicality and

Involvement were correlated, r = .31, p < .02. Figure 5 shows mean self-reported

Typicality, Involvement and Utility for high and low arousal video clips labeled Real

People versus Actors.

Ratings of Video Clips Labeled Real People vs. Actors Error bars represent 2SE 3.50

3.00

2.50

2.00 Typicality Involvement 1.50 Utility 1.00

0.50

0.00 Real People Actors Real People Actors Low Arousal Low Arousal High Arousal High Arousal

2.2.4. Discussion

When manipulating reality labels, subjective perceptions of Typicality, Involvement and Utility of messages also seemed to be manipulated. Labels of Real People increased ratings of Typicality, Involvement and Utility. Arousing message content had an effect on

95 these three constructs as well. High arousal content was rated as more useful, less typical and less involving.

In replication of the recognition memory results obtained in Experiment 1 with a smaller sample (N = 32), participants in Experiment 2 showed better free recall and recognition memory for high arousal video content labeled Real People versus Actors.

Extending Experiment 1, Experiment 2 provides evidence that labels of Real People seems to enhance long term memory for high arousal video content.

High arousal clips labeled Real People received the highest Utility ratings. In study 1, high-arousal clips labeled Real People produced the highest skin conductance ratings.

The data are consistent with an evolutionary perspective that the augmentation of memory by arousal functions to increase the chance that information useful for survival will be remembered.

Involvement represents the extent to which individuals remain unaware of the mediated nature of the event, then this measure may also co-vary with cognitive effort required to critically evaluate the mediated nature of the event. The data suggest that awareness of the mediated nature of the event is greater for high arousal content, and this is consistent with HRV results obtained in Study 1, indicating vagal withdrawal for high arousal content. Furthermore, the data suggest that awareness of the mediated nature of the event, or low involvement, is greater for content labeled as Actors, which is also consistent with HRV results obtained in Study 1.

High arousal content was perceived as less typical, and free recall results showed that high arousal content was remembered better High arousal events were likely easier to recall than low arousal events, but only when they were perceived as real, or useful for

96 survival. When high arousal events are perceived as Actors, it seems that individuals become critically aware of the mediated nature of the event, indicated by low involvement ratings for high arousal content labeled Actors. This awareness of the mediated nature of the event seems to interfere with memory for highly arousing events, regardless of whether they are atypical. Shapiro & Fox (2004) found that individuals have more confidence for memories of typical events, but better actual memory for atypical events. If atypical information was remembered best, then high-arousal clips labeled

Actors, which were rated as the least Typical, should have been remembered best.

Instead, participants showed the least free memory and recognition memory for high- arousal content labeled Actors. Reality labels increased the perceived typicality for high arousal content, which was also considered atypical. Typicality did not correlate with memory in the present study, and thus, likely represents a third variable. It is likely that arousal is actually the mechanism for increased memory, and often, content that is frequent is confounded with utility for survival, and self-relevance.

3. General Discussion and Conclusion

The term “suspension of disbelief” incorrectly presumes a default state of disbelief.

By default, people are more inclined to believe media messages than to critically evaluate them. All forms of media - even live theatre- can produce transportation. In live theatre, the constructed nature of the simulation is visible, and it is easier to be aware of the performance aspects. Video media, on the other hand, produce perceptually compelling simulations designed to elicit attention effortlessly. The brain has likely not evolved in the last 100 years to process modern media technology differently than existential realty.

However, when there is reason to consider the falseness of a media portrayal, the awareness of the mediated nature of the experience requires cognitive effort that seems to be encoded with the experience and interferes with external perception.

Today, there is more information available to people than ever before. As the quantity of information continues to grow, one of the most important skills information consumers will need is the ability to critically evaluate message quality. Source credibility of messages is an important indicator of message quality. Perceived veracity corresponds to increased attention to external events. Information that is perceived as based in external reality is also perceived as more useful for survival. The present study shows that the distinction between “more or less real” aligns with psycho-physiological indices of emotional experience and analytical thought. All media messages are constructed, and some are more constructed than others. In order to confirm veracity, individuals should approach every message with a consideration of its constructed nature and critically evaluate its real world relevance or basis in existential reality. If individuals learn to initially approach all media with disbelief, Transportation or Presence experiences would then involve an informed and conscious decision to “suspend disbelief.” Ultimately, predicting self-relevant consequences is an important task for survival. Media representations may or may not represent existential reality, and can potentially misinform or mislead. Reality monitoring errors can lead to forgetting information that is relevant to survival, and remembering information which is not relevant for survival.

Media & Self-Relevant Consequences: Media literacy involves two key principles: critical consumption and active creation of media. To avoid distortions that negatively impact individuals in society, constructions of media must be more accurately

98 representative of the real world. Individuals must also be educated to critically evaluate messages and must devote cognitive effort to critically evaluating the credibility of media sources. Media users must also devote effort into creating media, and regulating and holding media institutions accountable for accurately reflecting external reality.

Potter (2004) asserts that media literacy would be more effective if grounded in cognitive theory about how the human mind works. Media engage perceptual senses of experience that have signified external reality over the course of evolution, and which hi- jack the memory benefit afforded to information based in external reality. Of course, vivid, interactive perceptual experiences are not necessarily correlated or representative of experience in its natural, existential state; that is, these experiences are not necessarily self-relevant or predictive of self relevant consequences. Media vividly perceptually mimic the external, existential environment, while reflecting a filtered and potentially completely fabricated version of it. Critical evaluation of media representations involves an awareness of the relevance of media representations to referent reality, and active critical awareness that media often present inaccurate representation of external reality.

When information is highly relevant to survival, critically evaluating the source interferes with perception and reduces arousal, which bestows a significant benefit to memory, and is also an index of motivation activation systems which evolved to promote survival.

In addition to vividness, the frequency of representations builds prototypical mental representations that inform decisions. As demonstrated by Shapiro and colleagues, information that is typical is perceived as more “real” or likely to occur in real life.

Conversely, information perceived as “real” is also then considered more typical than information perceived as less veridical; suggesting that prototypical, mental

99 representations are based on the frequency of veridical information. Unless information is discounted from inclusion in the prototype, vivid, frequent information will be used to inform predictions about the likelihood of an event – even if it’s irrelevant.

Knowledge is power. Institutions entrusted with, or invested in monitoring reality, and determining the veracity of information perceived as cultural truths are often based on majorities. Juries decide guilt or innocence, voters decide laws, and statistical frequencies define scientific truth. Failures in reality monitoring at the institutional level can occur. The credibility of individuals and institutions is closely tied to the financial incentives that individuals receive within institutions (Johnson, 2007). Individuals who receive large financial incentives for their work receive lower credibility ratings among the general public than individuals who are motivated less by financial interests (Johnson,

2007). Investigative journalism performs a critical reality monitoring function in democratic society. Traditionally, journalism institutions have been funded by commercial sponsors and audience subscriptions. As revenues from subscriptions and sponsorship have evaporated, supposedly due to the rise of digital media, traditional institutions of journalism are searching for viable options to ensure their sustainability.

Who will pay for the work of investigative journalism? Citizen journalism is essentially volunteer journalism, but still mainly relies on the work of traditional institutions of journalism (Starr, 2009). Recently, to address the need for information in developing countries where journalism is corrupted or poorly funded, crowd-sourcing models have emerged to collect, filter, and distribute credible information via the web. Interfaces such as Usahidi.com allow mobile phone users to send location and event information via text message to the website, which uses a statistical algorithm to automatically “fact-check”

100 based on source credibility, frequency, and other features of the report, before posting the real-time information to a map of the region. Recent popularity and commercial success of documentary films may provide a new structure for investigative journalism and reality monitoring. Government may also need to subsidize of the press to ensure that it functions in the public interest (i.e. not based on subjective perceptions of truth motivated by commercial interests).

Digital media have fundamentally changed the means of production and distribution of information. The average information consumer now has the ability to produce and distribute many forms of information to mass audiences. However, the infrastructure, or the “tubes” through which media must pass through is owned by commercial institutions.

Regulation of these commercial institutions by citizens to ensure the impartial “free flow of information” is also critical to ensuring a diverse marketplace of ideas and the basis for an informed citizenry. To bring more consistency between mass media representations and the actual frequency of events in the real world is to change the inaccuracies in media. Statistically typical depictions should reflect the values of diversity in the marketplace of ideas and inclusivity of a global community.

Traditionally, the work of “customer service” was carried out by humans. Today, industries save billions of dollars in human labor by shifting the “service” labor to customers in the form of automated “self-service.” After an initial learning curve, the automated system can afford greater convenience and save them time, but when it fails, the lack of human accountability can result in a frustrating evasion of services. Like customer service, the work traditionally carried out by the institutions of journalism, of fact-checking, and determining the reliability and credibility of sources, has been shifted

101 to information consumers, and their demands for quality of information services and credibility are manifested by “free market forces.”

Further research is needed to explore the conditions under which media users engage in critical processing of media content, considering the constructed nature and representational aspects of media portrayals, versus interpreting content as though it represented real life. Imagine if every episode of “Sex and the City” was preceded by a disclaimer stating that

“The women portrayed are statistically unlikely fictional representations of women in New York City. While the average weight of characters is 110 lb, the average weight for a Caucasian woman is 150 lb; although the main characters are Caucasian, only 56% of women in Manhattan are Caucasian. The median income for a single woman in Manhattan is $45,712 per year. Estimates are based on current US Census data”

Media literacy interventions that emphasize the discrepancies between real life and popular media portrayals, for example, concerning women and minorities, may represent an effective way to moderate the effects of media stereotypes on beliefs and attitudes.

Systematically thinking about the unreality of media portrayals has been shown to counteract negative body image (Watson & Vaughn, 2006). There is need for more studies to examine whether inducing critical processing prior to or during encoding of media messages reduces media influence on attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. In addition to encoding processes, critical processing can also change decision making processes.

When participants are induced to consider the sources of their social judgments estimates before reporting them on a survey, cultivation effects seem to disappear (Busselle, 2000;

Shrum, Wyer & Guinn, 1999).

Prosocial simulations. Fiction offers the potential to represent and to simulate that which does not exist. Without imagination, the capacity to envision a better reality, we

102 would be destined to repeat the past or to watch passively as fate took its course. Martin

Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, and John Lennon’s “Imagine” were fantasies intended to promote first the collective vision, and then the realization of a better future.

In order to predict a course of action likely to produce desirable consequences, it is helpful to have an accurate understanding of how things have worked in the past. A particular peril of stories is that they are equally good at communicating prototypical and atypical cases, and rarely how representative they are (Strange, 2002). In order to avoid false beliefs as well as missing important signals about the external environment, media users must actively engage in reality monitoring. Mental models that accurately reflect reality will likely help people with envisioning and predicting probable ways of realizing goals. Much like Game theory, people need help envisioning a systems perspective.

Simulations that promote systems transparency can help people visualize a broader range of non-obvious strategies to obtain an objective. Frequency, Recency and Vividness of media representations seem to augment learning from media, and constructing the mental models used to make social judgments and decisions in everyday life (Shrum, 2008).

Tools that help individuals to envision probabilistic outcomes to their actions promote feelings of agency and motivation to work towards goals (e.g. Bandura, 2009; Reeves,

2009). Where there is a way, there is a will.

Simulating a reality that no longer exists can be constructive for the purposes of instantiating an accurate collective memory of historical events. Simulation of a reality which does not yet, or may never exist can be constructive for anticipating future self- relevant consequences. The movie Avatar is a simulation to show humans themselves from the perspective of an identifiable “other” with no pre-conceived schema Simulations

103 for the purpose of instruction or pro-social communication can help people to realize self- relevant goals and avoid unnecessary risks.

Reality Media or Media Reality? In terms of formal features, media are progressing toward increasing perceptual realism. In terms of content, the extent to which media representations accurately reflect existential reality is an ongoing process. Art imitates life, and life imitates art; hopefully, it is a positive feedback cycle. We are products of our environments, as much as we have power to change our environment. As the general cultural environment becomes increasingly saturated with media, people should choose their media environments wisely; active creation and critical interpretation of media are key skills. Reality television and documentary genres are growing, likely because they tend to elicit increased arousal and automatic attention. In addition, reality programming is generally more cost effective than drama. Different countries have adapted generic formats to suit their own national cultures, yet there is still remarkable consistency across cultures in reality television (i.e. talent competitions, special living-environments, and elimination game shows). Seventy countries have produced national versions of Big

Brother, making it one of the most widely watched reality shows in the world. In the

United States and the UK, the number of reality shows continues to grow each year (Hill,

2005). According to Cable News Network, reality television shows account for 85% of the most valuable advertising space on television. In 2005, Fox Entertainment Group launched an entire cable network devoted to reality programming.

Coinciding with the growth of reality genres, high fidelity, portable media technology for producing and broadcasting reality content are becoming increasingly available, affordable and accessible. Most standard cell phones have the ability to record images,

104 sound and video. Digital video cameras, webcams and personal computers enable almost anyone to join the growing ranks of pseudo-celebrities on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter,

Blogspot, Wordpress, Flickr, etc.

Whether exposing the off-stage lives of celebrities, or catapulting ordinary “non- actors” to the stage, reality media fundamentally represents people’s interest in other people. The popular series Big Brother references the Orwellian surveillance society, but reverses the power structure by putting the masses into the role of the all-knowing observer. Similarly, Facebook, Twitter, etc., provide people with 24-7 access to others’ lives. Similarly, the rise of soft news journalism has been attributed to market forces of consumer demand. Soft news typically gets higher ratings than hard news, and mainly consists of surveillance of celebrities outside their “formal” entertainment roles and artists promoting their goods. Media celebrities, such as Oprah, Paris Hilton, Martha

Stewart and Tyra Banks have cultivated their careers by “living in the public eye” providing viewers with the illusion of intimacy and informality, cultivating familiarity, and liking by increasing the frequency of their signal. Soft news is essentially surveillance of other people’s daily existence, manifested in the time people spend consuming the details of people’s personal lives. At its root, soft news reflects the social- construction of the self, in which the self-concept is constructed in relation to others.

Reality is increasingly mediated and monitored, and our lives are increasingly filled with symbolic representations as opposed to referent content. Children are growing up in an environment in which they are accustomed to viewing themselves on screens and self- monitoring. In this environment of heavy self-monitoring, distinctions between symbolic representations and existential reality may become blurred. Furthermore, a society

105 focused on image rather than self-relevant consequences may lead individuals to objectify themselves and others, among other harmful consequences associated with self- objectification (Heldman, 2008). Recently, teens have started deactivating their Facebook accounts because living up to their own descriptions of themselves created pressure and otherwise distracted them from actually doing so (Turkle, 2010). In “A White House

Christmas Special with Oprah Winfrey,” Michelle Obama stated the importance of engaging with people in reality, as opposed to paying attention to news reports because it allowed her “to focus on the work” as opposed to “whether people see the good in the work.” Barack chimed in “And even if they don’t see it, you feel good about yourself either way.” This echoes a classical philosophical question faced in political leadership: when to listen to yourself, and when to listen to others.

Surrealism. Reality shows are a mixture of mundane and surreal. Viewers identify with characters that are “similar” or typical enough, but are put in extraordinary, fantasy- like, artificial environments. Alternatively, viewers are interested to see atypical, celebrities exist with the typical scenarios/environments they identify with. In both cases, the mundane and the surreal, the familiar and the unfamiliar, are juxtaposed. Both scenarios fundamentally blur the line between fiction and reality, rendering it meaningless: life (real people) becomes art (actors), and art (actors) becomes life (real).

Jean Baudrillard described the simulacra as a type of simulation which provides the psychological equivalent of reality, effectively replacing reality, and thus, rendering reality meaningless. Baudrillard believed that modern society exists in a simulacrum, and has already completely lost sight of the real. Modern society has lost sight of the means of production from the natural world for all goods upon which it depends on a daily basis.

106

Modern society has also lost sight of the value of goods, i.e. the distinction between goods that are needed and goods for which value is generated by commercial images (e.g.

(Patel, 2010).

Baudrillard frequently gives Disneyland as an example of “Simulacra,” or the replacement of reality with fantasy. It has been said that Federico Fellini did for film what Salvador Dali had done for painting. In 81/2, Fellini makes a film about himself making a film, and all of the “characters” are actors he had worked with in other films, and with whom he had actually had the same intimate relations portrayed in the film. In most cases, art imitates life, but Fellini attempts to show what happens when life imitates art- that is, when life itself is dominated by artifice and performance. The film represents his life as a film maker in exaggerated form, blurring together the making of the film, which provides the characters and script for his life, with his perceptions, as he maintains the constant detached perspective of a film-maker. His detachment, and awareness that external reality is artifice, echoes the desensitized viewer, and the meaninglessness of symbols and lack of self-relevant consequences within the simulation.

Postmodernism: The lessons that should be taken from postmodernism are in valuing diversity, and acknowledging that our access to external reality, to truth itself, is limited by subjective perception. Everything can be true in some context, and it is important to be aware of heuristic processing so as not to overlook valuable information. Everything is an illusion; however, the mistake of postmodernism is that information does become more or less relevant based on its significance for survival. The distinction between fiction and reality is about predicting future self-relevant consequences. Discriminating information that is relevant for survival from information that is not is a critical task for survival, and

107 in this sense, reality can be defined by self-relevant consequences. Being able to identify information that is useful, credible and reliable for predicting self-relevant consequences is an important survival skill. Positively valenced information bestows no memory benefit for details, perhaps because it bestows less benefit for survival. In other words, avoiding negative consequences may be more significant for survival than correctly interpreting signals of positive consequences.

Presumably, active disbelief requires cognitive effort, which has been associated with executive functioning (Thayer et al., 2009). Active disbelief was instigated in this research by framing video clips as Actors. Evidence presented here suggests that processing video clips framed as Actors requires more mental effort than processing video clips framed as Real People, and that a state of belief promoted increased memory for audiovisual details, in accord with the notion that belief and perception are linked

(Gilbert, 1991). If people are invested in a belief, cognitive dissonance can prevent them from active disbelief. Even if faced with strong rational evidence, people may prefer to be consistent with past behavior. Humans are sense makers. The novel Naked Lunch showed that even nonsense could be perceived as representative of some reality. Thus, it seems easier to provide a context in which people can create truth and confirm their assumptions, than a context which forces people to disbelieve, and to challenge their perceptions. As the environment becomes increasingly saturated with information, critical thinking skills and the practice of disbelief will help individuals to discriminate information signaling self-relevant consequences from noise.

108

Appendix

SAM Survey Used for Subjective Arousal and Valence Ratings

109

Latin Square Design for Study 1 and Study 2

110

80 Clips of Ambiguous Reality Status: Block#.Clip#, Description Description (Low/-) Description (Low/0) Description (Hi/0) Description (Hi/-) 1.1 Terminal illness, man 3.1 Karate, chopping wood 5.1 Crowd dancing, rave party 7.1 Woman sobbing, close-up Military funeral, 9 men Married couple laughing Afghan children, militia training, 1.2 3.2 5.2 Excited sports crowd, USA 7.2 carrying casket in bed barbed wire Man tells of sister’s Wedding, father Man dying of head injury, 1.3 3.3 5.3 Woman giving birth 7.3 murder daughter, aisle terrorist bombing 1.4 Woman sick in bed 3.4 Couple won lottery 5.4 High school football team 7.4 Soldier interviewed, Iraq Widow, crying, funeral Astronaut, moon terrain, 1.5 3.5 5.5 Making a porno, film crew 7.5 Boy attempting to choke mother war says soil color 1.8 Religious figures, funeral 3.6 barber, spraying hair 5.6 Man sunbathing, sheep run by 7.6 Woman vomiting, bathroom Policeman, office Woman in hospital with 1.7 3.7 Tour guide, Venice 5.7 Children’s birthday party 7.7 preparing to testify pneumonia Baptist sermon, preaching 1.8 Woman injecting heroin 3.8 Old friends at table 5.8 7.8 Afghan man to be hanged reverend Police questions witness, Anxious bride, looking Arrested African man watches 1.9 3.9 5.9 Sex worker, hidden camera 7.9 3 days since in mirror friend executed Doctor, discussing Party, loud, crowded house, 1.10 treatment side effects, 3.10 Astronaut in space 5.10 7.10 Body parts in a dumpster dim light office, degrees on wall Elderly man, reading to Man using toilet blue 2.1 4.1 6.1 Girl says she stabbed friend 8.1 Bloody man’s face, ER treatment children room 2.2 Bride talking to elder 4.2 Wedding couple dance 6.2 Suicide, jumped from building 8.2 Electric chair, man dying Daughter confronting Police raid, apartment 2.3 4.3 Wedding couple kiss 6.3 8.3 Arrested man, shot while walking father, outdoors shootout, hallway 2.4 2 men fishing 4.4 Man sick in bed. 6.4 Murder robbery victim 8.4 Soldiers shoot at crowd Indigenous tribesman says Woman drying hair of 2.5 4.5 6.5 Shark attack 8.5 Body cremated he likes New York lover 2.6 4 rabbis, sacred ritual 4.6 Husband begs wife 6.6 Politician, phone interview 8.6 Human corpse in mud Religious man, wire through 2.7 Waitress, dim restaurant 4.7 Sad widow reminiscing 6.7 Boxers, match, gym. 8.7 cheek Woman in kitchen, Social worker, throws binder 2.8 Family dinner 4.8 6.8 8.8 Woman, arm cut off, hospital watermelon as car drives away. 2.9 Woman laughing, profile 4.9 Family reunited, airport 6.9 Casualties, African town, war 8.9 Rape, video evidence 2.10 Mother daughter dinner 4.10 Man gets ready for date 6.10 Woman sniffing coke, party 8.10 4 soldiers, combat zone, injury

111

Video Media Use Survey Items

 Do you watch television? This would include watching network/cable/on-demand/TiVo programs, as well as watching videos and/or DVDs on a TV (as opposed to a computer)? Approximately how many hours a week do you spend doing this activity? (please count all hours spent doing this activity, whether you are doing this activity only, or whether you are doing additional things at the same time).  Do you watch video on a computer? This includes YouTube, watching television episodes on your computer, DVDs, online lectures, video streaming, etc. (If no, go on to the next page). Approximately how many hours a week do you spend doing this activity? (please count all hours spent doing this activity, whether you are doing this activity only, or whether you are doing additional things at the same time).  Do you play video or computer games? This includes online role-playing and multi-player games, console games, portable games, any computer-games, etc. (If no, go on to the next page). Approximately how many hours a week do you spend doing this activity? (please count all hours spent doing this activity, whether you are doing this activity only, or whether you are doing additional things at the same time).

112

Online Memory Survey Items

(Answer Choice Order Randomized)

We are interested in how narratives are understood and communicated. You were shown several video clips, and so what I would like you to do is retell absolutely everything you can remember about the clips named below. Please include absolutely everything you can remember about the clip, every detail you can muster.

EACH PROMPT HAD A TEXT BOX WITH ROOM FOR UNLIMITED RESPONSE 1. Military casket and funeral. 2. Police questioning witness (indoors). 3. Lottery winners. 4. Tour guide. 5. Daughter and father talking. 6. Indigenous tribesman. 7. Newlyweds kissing. 8. Man getting ready for a date. 9. Rave party. 10. Man watches friend executed. 11. Boy attacks mother. 12. Woman vomiting. 13. Electrocution. 14. Woman sniffs coke. 15. Shark attack. 16. Murder-robbery victim.

THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS REPRESENT AUDIO DETAILS 1. In the clip of the man whose sister was murdered, what happened just before her murder? o She got her nursing degree o She got out of prison o She married an older man o She recovered from cancer o She survived a car accident 2. In the clip of the doctor explaining a procedure, what complications does the doctor say might occur? [S1] o Excessive bleeding o Infection o Nausea from general anesthesia o Restlessness and sleeplessness o Soreness and swelling 3. In the clip of the woman with pneumonia, what symptom does she say she feels? o Coldness o Shakiness o Nausea o Headache o Faintness 4. In the clip of the men fishing, what did one man say to the other? o "Better get on it!" o "He’s gaining on you!" o "He’s going to town!" o "Thar she blows!" o "You’ve got one!" 5. In the clip of the astronauts walking on the moon, what color did the astronaut say the soil was? o Black o Blue o Green

113

o Orange o Silver 6. In the clip of the anxious bride, which best describes what the bride was saying to her mother? o Don’t touch the dress, Mom, you might rip it. o I can’t believe this day is finally here. o I’m so nervous, Mom, I feel nauseous. o Is the dress zipped all the way in the back? o Mom, this dress is too tight, I can’t breathe. 7. In the clip of the 16 year old girl who was convicted of homicide, how did she kill her friend? [S1] o She choked her o She hit her with a car o She pushed her into a moving car o She shot her o She stabbed her 8. In the clip of the man reading to the schoolchildren, what does he ask the children? o How many of you grew up in this town? o How many of you have been to the desert? o How many of you have brothers and sisters? o How many of you have read this book before? o How many of you know what a dinosaur is? 9. In the clip of the policeman questioning a man, how long had it been since the man had seen the person in question? [S1] o One day o One week o Three days o Three weeks o Two weeks 10. In the scene of the family having dinner, what vegetable does the grandmother ask the child to eat? o Broccoli o Brussel sprout o Carrot o Corn o Potato 11. In the clip of the soldier being interviewed, what did he say about how Iraqis view American soldiers? o Iraqis appreciate the American soldiers o Iraqis have respect for American soldiers who are dying in the war. o Iraqis say the war has brought positive changes to the country. o Iraqis think the American soldiers should go home. o Iraqis think the war is a big joke. 12. In the scene of the daughter confronting her father, what did the father say? o I'm not looking for a fight. o Nobody's bothering you about it. o That doesn't matter to me one bit. o This is a fine time to talk. o Your mother thought you should know. 13. In the clip of the woman calling in sick to work, what does she attribute her illness to? o Back pain o Head cold o Migraine o Sore throat o Stomach pain 14. In the clip of the sports crowd, what was the crowd chanting? o Booooooooooooo o Go Team Go… Go Team Go o Let’s go Ducks…. Let’s go Ducks o USA…USA…USA

114

o We’re #1, We’re #1 15. In the clip of the preaching reverend, what did he say we must fight? o Disease o Greed o Hatred o Poverty o Racism

THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS REPRESENT AUDIO-VISUAL DETAILS 1. In the clip of the man at the barber shop, which stage of the hair cutting process is shown? o Cutting the hair with scissors o Drying the hair with a towel o Shaving the hair with an electric razor o Styling the hair with gel o Wetting the hair with a spray bottle 2. In the scene of the family reunited at the airport, who is arriving with the luggage cart? o The father arrives and is greeted by his two children and wife. o The mother arrives and is greeted by her two children and husband. o Two children arrive, and they are greeted by their grandparents. o Two children arrive, and they are greeted by their mother. o Two grandparents arrive, and they are greeted by a mother, father and their two children. 3. In the clip of the woman crying at her kitchen table, what is offered to her from the corner of the screen? o A box of chocolates o A box of tissues o A cup of tea o A pint of ice cream o A slice of watermelon on a plate

THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS REPRESENT VISUAL DETAILS 1. In the clip of the children at the birthday party, where are the children? o Backyard deck o Grassy park o Living room o Playground o Restaurant 2. In the clip of the man crying and asking his wife not to leave him, what was the man wearing? o Hospital gown o Suit jacket and tie o Sweatshirt o Tuxedo o White collared shirt 3. In the clip of the social worker who throws his binder at a car as it drives away, what type of car was it? o Blue Cadillac o Blue van o Green truck o Tan Cadillac o White van 4. In the clip of a crowd of people being shot at by soldiers, which best describes where the scene take place? o Parking lot o Streets of a rural village o Forrest o Marketplace o Snowy field 5. In the clip of the man crying after finding out he is terminally ill, what was the color of the wall behind him? o Blue

115

o Green o Red o White o Yellow 6. In the clip of the man crying because he is terminally ill, what is he wearing? o Red pajamas o Grey business suit o Brown sweater o Blue and white striped collar shirt o White T-shirt 7. In the clip of the man who is shot in the head while walking, what was the assailant doing just prior to shooting the man? o Buying groceries o Shouting o Standing in a crowd o Taking a photograph o Talking on a payphone 8. In the clip of the war torn African town, what seems to be the occupation of the Caucasian man in the scene? o Doctor o Journalist o Looter o Priest o Soldier 9. In the scene of the couple dancing at their wedding, what color is the flower in the groom’s lapel? o Pink o Purple o Red o White o Yellow 10. In the clip of the children training to be in a militia, what were the children doing? o Cleaning rifles in the desert o Crawling through trenches o Crawling under barbed wire o Pushups o Shooting rifles from trenches 11. In the clip of the karate students, what type of floor were they standing on? o Carpet o Grass o Gravel o Tournament Mat o Wood 12. In the clip of the man using the toilet, what color were the walls of the restroom? o Blue o Green o Red o White o Yellow 13. In the clip of the man who jumped off the building, what color sweatshirt was he wearing? o Black o Blue o Green o Orange o White 14. In the clip of the police shootout, where did the scene take place? o Apartment hallway

116

o Backyard of a house o On the street of a residential neighborhood o Inside a restaurant o Inside a bank 15. In the clip of the woman rushing into the ER, what color shirt was she wearing? o Black o Blue o Orange o Pink o White 16. In the clip of the woman crying because her mother died, what colors were her hair and sweater? o Black hair, red sweater o Blonde hair, blue sweater o Brown hair, black sweater o Grey hair, pink sweater o Red hair, white sweater 17. In the scene of the victim of a terrorist bombing, what was the man doing to assist the victim? o Applying direct pressure to the victim's head to stop the bleeding. o Talking to the victim to keep him concious. o Dragging the unconcious victim's body away from a collapsing building. o Helping the victim to stand up. o Walking the victim to an ambulance. 18. In the clip of the bride talking to a guest at her wedding, who was she talking to? o A man her age, probably a cousin. o A very elderly woman, probably an aunt. o A woman her age, probably a friend or cousin. o A young boy, probably a nephew. o A young girl, probably a niece.

THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS WERE OMITTED DUE TO FLOOR/CEILING EFFECTS In the clip of the man being hanged, what color clothing was the prisoner wearing? (VISUAL) o Black o Blue o Brown o Orange o White In the clip of the woman giving birth, what color hair did the nurse have? (VISUAL) o Black o Blonde o Light brown o Red o White In the clip of a soldier receiving first aid in a combat zone, how many (VISUAL) soldiers were treating him? o 1 o 2 o 3 o 4 o 5 In the clip of the orthodox rabbis performing a ritual, how many rabbis are shown in the scene? (VISUAL) o 2 o 4 o 6 o 8 o 10

117 fMRI studies show media realism is associated with a mental representation that equates symbolic representations with the self-relevant consequences of its referent. Perani, Fazio, Borghese, et al. (2001) compared brain activation in response to images of a hand rendered in three levels of realism. The most realistic hand activated regions in the brain associated with motor-spatial processing, while the less realistically rendered 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional hand images did not. Only perceptions of actions in real life mapped onto existing action representations, (i.e. visual spatial network including right posterior parietal cortex). The less realistic images engaged visual perceptual processes but not motor knowledge. The finding that visual realism engaged motor and spatial processing while cartoon or abstract visual images engaged perceptual processes but not motor knowledge is consistent with the conceptualization that for signs, people attribute characteristics and prepare to take action, whereas for symbols, people infer meaning and ascribe intent, (Salomon, 1979). Processing the possibility of factual and fictional scenarios activated common regions including medial-temporal lobe structures; however, processing factual scenarios involved episodic memory retrieval and self-referential thinking, while processing fictional scenarios involved semantic memory retrieval (Abraham, Yves von Cramon, & Schubotz, 2008). Judgments of the extent to which media portrayals are like real life or engender a subjective sense of “being there” are essentially judgments of the fidelity of the media to express various critical elements in the content, (i.e. emotions, people, places, events). All mediated content is symbolic. The fidelity, and perceived realism of symbolic representations ultimately depend on the talent of writers, actors, directors, photographers, editors, audio-visual technicians, engineers, computer programmers and all those involved in media industry to convey the critical elements of the referent that create the subjective sense of “being there” and to minimize the presence of the media that create the illusion. While some elements may be judged to be like reality, others may not be, depending on what viewers expect and how well features of the portrayal match expectations.

118

REFERENCES

Abraham, A., Yves von Cramon, D., & Schubotz, R. I. (2008). Meeting George Bush versus Meeting Cinderella: The Neural Response When Telling Apart What is Real from What is Fictional in the Context of Our Reality. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(6), 965 - 976. Allen, J. J. B., Chambers, A. S., & Towers, D. N. (2007). The many metrics of cardiac chronotropy: A pragmatic primer and a brief comparison of metrics. Biological Psychology, 74(2), 243-262. Aronson, E. (2000). Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion After Columbine: Macmillan. Atkin, C. (1983). Effects of realistic TV violence vs. fictional violence on aggression. Journalism Quarterly, 60, 615-621. Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66, 3-11. Bartholow, B. D., Bushman, B. J., & Sestir, M. A. (2006). Chronic violent video game exposure and desensitization to violence: Behavioral and event-related brain potential data. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 532-539. Berkowitz, L., & Alioto, J. T. (1973). The meaning of an observed event as a determinant of its aggressive consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28(2), 206-217. Bernardi, L., Porta, C., Gabutti, A., Spicuzza, L., & Sleight, P. (2001). Modulatory effects of respiration. Autonomic neuroscience : basic & clinical, 90(1), 47-56. Berntson, G. G., Cacioppo, J. T., & Quigley, K. S. (1993). Respiratory sinus arrhythmia: Autonomic origins, physiological mechanisms, and psychophysiological implications. Psychophysiology, 30(2), 183-196. Biocca, F., Burgoon, J., Harms, C., & Stoner, M. (2001). Criteria and scope conditions for a theory and measure of social presence, Fourth International Workshop on Presence. Philadelphia, PA. Botta, R. A., & Bracken, C. C. (2002). Muscle bound: Men, muscularity and social comparisons., International Communication Association. New Orleans, LA. Bracken, C. C. (2005). Presence and Image Quality: The Case of High-Definition Television. Media Psychology, 7(2), 191-205. Bradley, M. M., Codispoti, M., Cuthbert, B. N., & Lang, P. J. (2001). Emotion and motivation: I. Defensive and appetitive reactions in picture processing. . Emotion, 1, 276-298. Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (2007). Emotion and motivation, Handbook of psychophysiology (3rd ed.). (pp. 581-607): New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press. Bradley, S. D. (2007). Neural Network Simulations Support Heuristic Processing Model of Cultivation Effects. Media Psychology, 10(3), 449 - 469. Brock, T. C., & Green, M. C. (2005). Persuasiveness of Narratives, Persuasion: Psychological Insights and Perspectives: Sage. Busselle, R., & Bilandzic, H. (2008). Fictionality and perceived realism in experiencing stories: A model of narrative comprehension and engagement. Communication Theory, 18(2), 255-280. Busselle, R. W., & Greenberg, B. S. (2000). The nature of television realism judgments: A reevaluation of their conceptualization and measurement. Mass Communication and Society, 3, 249-268. Busselle, R. W., Ryabovolova, A., & Wilson, B. (2004). Ruining a good story: Cultivation, perceived realism, and narrative. . Communications: The European Journal of Communication, 29, 365- 378. Cantor, J., & Wilson, B. J. (1984). Modifying fear responses to mass media in preschool and elementary school children. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 28, 431-443. Carnagey, N. L., Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2007). The effect of video game violence on physiological desensitization to real-life violence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 489-496. Chalfonte, B. L., & Johnson, M. K. (1996). Feature memory and binding in young and older adults. Memory & Cognition, 24(4), 403-416.

119

Chen, J., Shohamy, D., Ross, V., Reeves, B., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). The impact of social belief on the neurophysiology of learning and memory, Society for Neuroscience Abstracts. Cline, V. B., Croft, R. G., & Courrier, S. (1973). Desensitization of children to television violence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 360-365. Codispoti, M., Surcinelli, P., & Baldaro, B. (2008). Watching emotional movies: Affective reactions and gender differences. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 69(2), 90-95. Condry, J. C., & Freund, S. (1989). Discriminating real from make-believe: A developmental study. Paper presented at the The biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Kansas City, MO. Dawson, M. E., Schell, A. M., & Filion, D. L. (2000). The electrodermal system. In J. T. Cacioppo & L. G. Tassinary & G. G. Berntson (Eds.), Handbook of Psychophysiology, 2nd edition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. De Cesarei, A., & Codispoti, M. (2008). Fuzzy picture processing: Effects of size reduction and blurring on emotional processing. Emotion, 8(3), 352-363. Dierker, L. C., Davis, K. F., & Sanders, B. (1995). The imaginary companion phenomenon: An analysis of personality correlates and developmental antecedents. Dissociation: The Official Journal of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, 8, 220-228. Dorr, A. (1983). No Shortcuts to Judging Reality. In J. Bryant & D. R. Anderson (Eds.), Children’s Understanding of Television: Research on Attention and Comprehension (pp. 199-220). New York: Academic Press. Dorr, A. (1985). Contexts for experience with emotion, with special attention to television. In M. Lewis & C. Saarni (Eds.), The Socialization of Emotions. New York: Plenum. Durso, F. T., & Johnson, M. K. (1980). The effects of orienting tasks on recognition, recall, and modality confusion of pictures and words. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 19(4), 416-429. Eron, L. D., Huesmann, L. R., Brice, P., Fischer, P., & Mermelstein, R. (1983). Age trends in the development of aggression and associated television habits. Developmental Psychology, 19, 71- 77. Feshbach, S. (1972). Reality and fantasy in filmed violence (Vol. 2). Washington, D.C.: Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Flavell, J. H., Flavell, E. R., Green, F. L., & Korfmacher, J. E. (1990). Do young children think of television images as pictures or real objects? Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 34(4), 399-419. Geen, R. G. (1975). The meaning of observed violence: Real vs. fictional violence and consequent effects on aggression and emotional arousal. Journal of Research in Personality, 9(4), 270-281. Geen, R. G., & Rakosky, J. J. (1973). Interpretations of observed aggression and their effect on GSR. Journal of Experimental Research in Personality, 6(4), 289-292. Gerrig, R. J., & Pillow, B. H. (1998). A developmental perspective on the construction of disbelief. In J. de Rivera & T. R. Sarbin (Eds.), Believed-in imaginings: The narrative construction of reality (pp. 101-119). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Gilbert, D. T. (1991). How mental systems believe. American Psychologist, 46(2), 107-119. Green, M. C. (2004). Transportation into Narrative Worlds: The Role of Prior Knowledge and Perceived Realism. Discourse Processes, 38(2), 247 - 266. Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(5), 701 - 721. Green, M. C., Garst, J., Brock, T. C., & Chung, S. (2006). Fact Versus Fiction Labeling: Persuasion Parity Despite Heightened Scrutiny of Fact. Media Psychology, 8(3), 267-285. Gutierres, S. E., Kenrick, D. T., & Partch, J. J. (1999). Beauty, Dominance, and the Mating Game: Contrast Effects in Self-Assessment Reflect Gender Differences in Mate Selection. Pers Soc Psychol Bull, 25(9), 1126-1134. Hamann, S. B. (2001). Cognitive and neural mechanisms of emotional memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5, 394-400.

120

Hawkins, R. P. (1977). The dimensional structure of children's perceptions of television reality. Communication Research, 4, 299-320. Heldman, C. (2008). Out-of-body Image. Ms. Magazine, Spring. Hill, A. (2005). Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. London: Routledge. Huesmann, L. R., Lagerspetz, K., & Eron, L. D. (1984). Intervening variables in the TV violence- aggression relation: Evidence from two countries. . Developmental psychology, 20(5), 746-775. Huston, A. C., & Wright, J. C. (1983). Children's processing of television: The informative functions of formal features. . In J. Bryant & D. R. Anderson (Eds.), Children's understanding of TV: Research on attention and comprehension. New York: Academic Press. Huston, A. C., Wright, J. C., Alvarez, M., Truglio, R., Fitch, M., & Piemyat, S. (1995). Perceived Reality and Children’s Emotional and Cognitive Responses to its Social Content. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 16, 231-251. Huston, A. C., Wright, J. C., Fitch, M., Wroblewski, R., & Piemyat, S. (1997). Effects of documentary and fictional television formats on children's acquisition of schemata for unfamiliar occupations. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 18(4), 563-586. Insko, B. (2003). Measuring Presence: Behavioral and Physiological Methods. In G. Riva & F. Davide & W. A. IJsselsteijn (Eds.), Being There: Concepts, Effects and Measurements of User Presence in Synthetic Environments: IOS Press. Jaffe, E. (2005). Reality Check. APS Observer, 18. Jaglom, L. M., & Gardner, H. (1981). Decoding the Worlds of Television. Studies in Visual Communication, 7(1), 33-47. Johnson, M. K. (2006). Memory and reality. American Psychologist, 61(8), 760-771. Johnson, M. K., Hashtroudi, S., & Lindsay, D. S. (1993). Source monitoring. Psychological Bulletin, 114(1), 3-28. Johnson, M. K., & Raye, C. L. (1981). Reality monitoring. Psychological Review, 88(1), 67-85. Kalamas, A. D., & Gruber, M. L. (1998). Electrodermal responses to implied versus actual violence on television. Journal of General Psychology, 125(1), 31-37. Kensinger, E. A. (2009). Remembering the Details: Effects of Emotion. Emotion Review, 1(2), 99-113. Klimmt, C., & Vorderer, P. (2003). Media psychology is not yet there: introducing theories on media entertainment to the presence debate. Presence: Teleoper. Virtual Environ., 12(4), 346-359. Kramer, A. F., & Weber, T. (2000). Applications of psychophysiology to human factors. In J. T. Cacioppo & L. G. Tassinary & G. G. Berntson (Eds.), Handbook of psychophysiology (Vol. 2nd ed, pp. 794-814). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kramer, T. H., Buckhout, R., Fox, P., & Widman, E. (1991). Effects of stress on recall. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 5(6), 483-488. Lang, A., Potter, R. F., & Bolls, P. D. (2009). Where Psychophysiology Meets the Media: Taking the Effects Out of Media Research. In J. Bryant & M. B. Oliver (Eds.), Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research (pp. 185-206). New York: Routledge. Lang, P. J. (1980). Behavioral treatment and bio-behavioral assessment: Computer applications. In J. B. Sidowski & J. H. Johnson & E. A. Williams (Eds.), Technology in Mental Health Care Delivery Systems (pp. 119-137). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, M. M. (1997). Motivated attention: Affect, activation and action. In P. J. Lang & R. F. Simons & M. T. Balaban (Eds.), Attention and Orienting: Sensory and Motivational Processes. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. . Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, M. M. (1998). International affective picture system (IAPS): Technical Manual and Affective Ratings. University of Florida, Gainesville: Center for Research in Psychophysiology. LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual Review in Neuroscience, 23, 155-184. Lee, K. M. (2004). Presence, explicated. Communication Theory. Special Issue: Media Enjoyment, 14(1), 27-50.

121

Libkuman, T. M., Stabler, C. L., & Otani, H. (2004). Arousal, valence, and memory for detail. Memory, 12, 1-11. Lombard, M., & Ditton, T. (1997). At the heart of it all: The concept of presence. Journal of Computer- Mediated Communication, 3(2). Lombard, M., Reich, R. D., Grabe, M. E., Bracken, C. C., & Ditton, T. B. (2000). Presence and television. Human Communication Research, 26(1), 75-98. Mares, M.-L. (1996). The role of source confusions in television's cultivation of social reality judgments. Human Communication Research, 23(2). McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill (Signet Books). McQuail, D., Blumler, J., & Brown, R. (1972). The television audience: a revised perspective. In D. McQuail (Ed.), Sociology of Mass Communication. London: Longman. Meehan, M., Insko, B., Whitton, M., & Brooks, J. F. (2002). Physiological measures of presence in stressful virtual environments. ACM Transact. Graph, 21(3), 645 - 652. Meehan, M., Razzaque, S., Insko, B., Whitton, M., & Brooks, F. P. (2005). Review of four studies on the use of physiological reaction as a measure of presence in stressful virtual environments. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback, 30(3), 239-258 Meltzoff, A. N., Kuhl, P. K., Movellan, J., & Sejnowski, T. J. (2009). Foundations for a New Science of Learning. Science, 325(5938), 284-288. Mitchell, K. J., & Johnson, M. K. (2000). Source monitoring: Attributing mental experiences, The Oxford handbook of memory. (pp. 179-195): New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, K. J., Johnson, M. K., Raye, C. L., & D'Esposito, M. (2000). fMRI evidence of age-related hippocampal dysfunction in feature binding in working memory1. Cognitive Brain Research, 10, 197-206. Mitchell, K. J., Johnson, M. K., Raye, C. L., Mather, M., & D'Esposito, M. (2000). Aging and reflective processes of working memory: Binding and test load deficits. Psychology and Aging, 15(3), 527- 541. Nikken, P., & Peeters, A. L. (1988). Children’s Perceptions of Television Reality. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 32(4), 441-452. Noble, G. (1973). Effects of different forms of filmed aggression on children's constructive and destructive play. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26, 54-59. Okita, S. Y., Bailenson, J., & Schwartz, D. L. (2008). Mere Belief of Social Action Improves Complex Learning. In S. Barab & K. Hay & D. Hickey (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference for the Learning Sciences, New Jersey. Utrecht, The Netherlands: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Patel, R. (2010). The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy: Picador. Peng, C. K., Isaac, C. H., Joseph, E. M., Jeffrey, M. H., Gurucharan, K., Herbert, B., & Ary, L. G. (2004). Heart rate dynamics during three forms of meditation. International journal of cardiology, 95(1), 19-27. Perani, D., Fazio, F., Borghese, N. A., Tettamanti, M., Ferrari, S., Decety, J., & Gilardi, M. C. (2001). Different brain correlates for watching real and virtual hand actions. Neuroimage, 14, 749-758. Perse, E. M., & Courtright, J. A. (1993). Normative Images of Communication Media: Mass and Interpersonal Channels in the New Media Environment. Human Communication Research, 19, 485-503. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 19, pp. 123-205). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Porges, S. W. (2005). The Vagus: A Mediator of Behavoiral and Physoilogic Features Associated with Autism In M. L. Bauman & T. L. Kemper (Eds.), The Neurobiology of Autism (2nd ed.). Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

122

Potter, W. J. (1988). Perceived reality in television effects research. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 32(1), 23-41. Pouliot, L., & Cowen, P. (2007). Does Perceived Realism Really Matter in Media Effects? Media Psychology, 9, 241 - 259. Ravaja, N. (2004). Contributions of Psychophysiology to Media Research: Review and Recommendations. Media Psychology, 6(2), 193-235. Reeves, B. (1978). Perceived TV Reality as a Predictor of Children’s Social Behavior. Journalism Quarterly, 55, 682-695. Reeves, B., Lang, A., Kim, E. Y., & Tatar, D. (1999). The effects of screen size and message content on attention and arousal. Media Psychology, 1(1), 49-67. Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. New York: Cambridge University Press. Reisberg, D., & Hertel, P. (2004). Memory and emotion. New York: Oxford University Press. Reiss, S., & Wiltz, J. (2004). Why people watch reality TV. Media Psychology, 6, 363-378. Sawin, D. B. (1981). The fantasy-reality distinction in televised violence: Modifying influences on children's aggression. Journal of Research in Personality, 15(3), 323-330. Scerbo, M. W., Freeman, F. G., Mikulka, P. J., Parasuraman, R., Di Nocero, F., & Prinzel, L. J., III. (2001). The efficacy of psychophysiological measures for implementing adaptive technology. Washington, DC: NASA. Shapiro, M. A., & Chock, T. M. (2003). Psychological processes in perceiving reality. Media Psychology, 5(2), 163-198. Shapiro, M. A., & Lang, A. (1991). Making television reality: Unconscious processes in the construction of social reality. . Communication Research. Special Issue: Cognitive processing of media, 18(5), 685-705. Shrum, L. J. (2009). Media Consumption and Perceptions of Social Reality: Effects and Underlying Processes. In J. B. M. B. Oliver (Ed.), Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, 3rd edition (pp. 50-73). New York: Psychology Press. Slater, M. D. (1990). Processing social information in messages: Social group familiarity, fiction versus nonfiction, and subsequent beliefs. Communication Research, 17, 327-343. Steuer, J. (1992). Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence. Journal of Communication, 42(4), 73-93. Strange, J. J. (2002). How fictional tales wag real-world beliefs: Models and mechanisms of narrative influence. In M. C. Green & J. J. Strange & T. C. Brock (Eds.), Narrative impact: Social and cognitive foundations (pp. 263-286). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Strange, J. J., & Leung, C. C. (1999). How anecdotal accounts in news and in fiction can influence judgments of a social problem’s urgency, causes, and cures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 436-449. Thayer, J. F., Hansen, A. L., Saus-Rose, E., & Johnsen, B. H. (2009). Heart Rate Variability, Prefrontal Neural Function, and Cognitive Performance: The Neurovisceral Integration Perspective on Self- regulation, Adaptation, and Health. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 37, 141-153. Thayer, J. F., & Lane, R. D. (2000). A model of neurovisceral integration in emotion regulation and dysregulation. Journal of Affective Disorders. Special Issue: Arousal in anxiety, 61(3), 201-216. Thomas, M. H., & Tell, P. M. (1974). Effects of viewing real versus fantasy violence upon interpersonal aggression. Journal of Research in Personality, 8(2), 153-160. Thomas, S., Hyde, J., & Komesaroff, P. (2007). Obesity Management, 3(5), 210-215. Troseth, G. L. (2003). TV guide: Two-year-old children learn to use video as a source of information. . Developmental Psychology, 39(1), 140-150. Turkle, S. (2010). Alone Together: Basic Books. Vorderer, P. (1992). Watching television as action: Reception of TV movies from the perspective of motivational psychology. Berlin: Sigma.

123

Watson, R., & Vaughn, L. M. (2006). Limiting the Effects of the Media on Body Image: Does the Length of a Media Literacy Intervention Make a Difference? Eating Disorders, 14(5), 385-400. Whitton, M. C. (2003). Making virtual environments compelling. Commun. ACM, 46(7), 40-47. Wild, T. C., Kuiken, D., & Schopflocher, D. (1995). The role of absorption in experimental involvement. Journal of personality and social psychology, 69(3). Wilson, B., & Busselle, R. W. (2004). Transportation into the Narrative and Perceptions of Media Realism. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association. New Orleans, LA. Wilson, B. J., Hoffner, C., & Cantor, J. (1987). Children's perceptions of the effectiveness of techniques to reduce fear from mass media. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 8(1), 39-52. Witmer, B. G., & Singer, M. J. (1998). Measuring Presence in Virtual Environments: A Presence Questionnaire. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, 7(3), 225-240. Wright, J. C., Huston, A. C., Reitz, A. L., & Piemyat, S. (1994). Young children's perceptions of television reality: determinants and developmental differences. Developmental psychology, 30(2). Wright, J. C., Kunkel, D., Pinon, M. F., & Huston, A. C. (1989). How children reacted to televised coverage of the space shuttle disaster. Journal of Communication, 39, 27-45.

124