ABSTRACT Title of Document: THE EFFECT OF EMOTION AND CULTURE IN ONLINE NEWS IMAGES ON MEMORY AND ATTRIBUTION ASSESSMENT OF SUBSEQUENT TEXT Jing Guo, Doctor of Philosophy, and 2013 Directed By: Professor, John E. Newhagen Philip Merrill College of Journalism This study is an experiment exploring the effect of emotion-laden and culturally salient news images on the processing of the subsequent news text in the online news setting. It argued that emotional and cultural elements carried in the news images can act as influential "heuristics" that jointly define the memory specificity and attribution judgment of the news text. This study pursued the concept of “culture” as it affects processing at a psychological level from both a dimensional perspective and a dynamic-constructivist approach. From a dynamic constructivist perspective, this study investigated the difference in the effect of seeing news photos portraying Chinese versus European Americans on news readers' memory and attribution of the text. From a dimensional view, it also examined the possible differences in attribution and memory as a result of the readers' own cultural identity, as being either European American or Chinese. The experiment used a 2X2X2 repeated measures design. The three factors included image emotion1 (positive vs. negative: within-subject), image culture (Chinese individual vs. European American individual: within-subject), and participant culture (Chinese vs. European American: between-subject). Twenty four non-student American adults and twenty four non-student Chinese adults (who had just come to the United States from Mainland China for a short visit) participated in the experiment. Four different news topics that would be salient to members of both cultures were used. To minimize the unmeasured effects of any given stimulus topic, a repeated measures design was employed. The results showed that news images alone did not have a significant impact on the overall memory for information in the news text. However, negative news images "narrowed" participants' memory, making them significantly less likely to recall the "peripheral" non-integral news information accurately, but this trend was prominent only when the images showed someone of the reader's own cultural group. The data also indicated that after viewing negative news images, participants were four times more likely to attribute the news event to external situational causes rather than dispositional factors of the main figure in the news. This trend was least noticeable when the image portrayed European Americans and most dominant when the photo showed Chinese. Other findings are discussed in detail. 1 Images, text, or any other stimulus features do not have “emotions,” or “cultures.” Images and text can, THE EFFECT OF EMOTION AND CULTURE IN ONLINE NEWS IMAGES ON MEMORY AND ATTRIBUTION ASSESSMENT OF SUBSEQUENT TEXT By Jing Guo Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Advisory Committee: Professor John E. Newhagen, Chair Professor Kalyani Chadha Professor Ira Chinoy Professor Xiaoli Nan Professor Ronald Yaros © Copyright by Jing Guo 2013 Dedication To my dear parents Junqiao and Shuli with love 献 给最亲 爱的 军桥和淑莉 ii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of so many people in so many ways. I would never reach the heights or explored the depths without the help, support, trust, guidance and efforts of a lot of people. Firstly, I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my committee chair, Dr. John Newhagen, whose infectious enthusiasm, unlimited zeal and spirited commitment to quality and rigor have been major driving forces through my dissertation research. He is a devoted advisor, a dedicated mentor, who taught me that the best research is brought to life by genuine curiosity and materialized by diligence, tenacity and perseverance. I am extremely grateful to Dr. Ira Chinoy for his continuous, valuable guidance, feedback, and encouragement in spite of his busy schedule during my dissertation writing and throughout the past several years at the College. I would like to thank him for not only setting an extraordinary example of an excellent researcher and an exceptional teacher, but also for having been a sincere, caring listener and advice-giver to his student. I am also truly thankful to Dr. Ron Yaros, who offered me tremendous guidance on crystalizing my research focus. He showed me the road and brought me on the path to a good researcher from the beginning of my doctoral studies. His passionate devotion to teaching excellence is also a source of inspiration for me in my future career. Dr. Kalyani Chadha has nourished me with her profound understanding of media and culture. I would like to thank her for opening the door for me to a pool of diverse perspectives about the theme, which enriched and broadened the scope of my dissertation research. I would also like to thank Dr. Xiaoli Nan and Dr. Meina Liu from the Department of Communication for their generous, indispensable help and guidance at different stages of my dissertation research. Their classes, which I took, enabled me to develop the theoretical grounding of this dissertation. There are many friends I would like to thank for their heartfelt support and friendship that gave me hope and strength when I needed them. They are Dr. Mo Wang, Dr. Eunryung Chong, Dr. Spencer Benson, Dr. Sabrina Kramer, Emily Grossnickle, Cynthia E. Shaw, Andrew Nynka, Stanton Paddock, Dr. Raymond McCaffrey, Klive (Soo-kwang) Oh, Michael Koliska, Yacong Yuan, Lei Bao, Andy (Shuai) Liu, Hsien Rung, Hsin shuo Yeh, Savita Krishnamurthy, Judy Sun, Rachel Collins, etc. I am deeply thankful and indebted to my parents, Junqiao and Shuli, as well as Weijia for their unconditional love and selfless support which made me strong and fearless in face of difficulties and obstacles during this long journey. iii Table of Contents Dedication ..................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ............................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................. vii Chapter 1: The Role of Emotion and Culture on Memory and Attribution Assessment of News ............................................................................................................................. 1 Text and Image Processing ....................................................................................... 4 Redundancy Theory and Dual Coding Theory. .................................................... 8 Parallel Distributed Processing Model (PDP). .................................................... 10 Image Emotion on Text Memory and Assessment ................................................. 11 Defining Emotion. ............................................................................................... 12 Emotional Valence As a Heuristic For Making Sense Of The World. ............... 14 Emotional Valence Matters: Limited Capacity Model. ...................................... 15 Valence and Memory. ......................................................................................... 16 Valence and Memory of Peripheral and Central Information. ........................... 18 Attribution. .......................................................................................................... 22 Attribution-Emotion-Action Model. ................................................................... 23 Culture on Memory and Content Assessment ........................................................ 25 Dimensional Meets Dynamic Constructive Approach. ...................................... 27 Differences in Cognitive Processing Between Europeans and Asians: Holistic Versus Analytical. ............................................................................................... 32 Culture and Emotion on Information Processing .................................................... 40 Chapter 2: Methodology ............................................................................................. 42 Participants .............................................................................................................. 44 Material ................................................................................................................... 45 Image Pretest ........................................................................................................... 46 Pretest Procedure. ............................................................................................... 46 Pretest Results. .................................................................................................... 48 Experiment Design .................................................................................................. 49 Between-Subject Factor: Participant Culture. ..................................................... 49 Within-Subject Factor Manipulation. ................................................................