TO HELP OR NOT TO HELP: THE EFFECTS OF AFFECTIVE EXPECTANCIES ON REACTIONS TO PROSOCIAL PERSUASIVE MESSAGES
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- March 22, 2019
- Creator
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Patel, Sheetal Janak
- Affiliation: Hussman School of Journalism and Media
- Abstract
- Researchers examining the concept of compassion fatigue have suggested that negative affective expectancies (expectations about how a person will feel in the future) about the outcomes of prosocial acts resulting from the news can negatively influence prosocial behavior and decrease compassion within the population. Yet, there has been little empirical evidence on which to stake this claim. The overarching purpose of this dissertation was to add to the theoretical nature of compassion fatigue by examining the effects of affective expectancies, social marketing messages, and cognitive load on feelings, attitudes, and behavior related to prosocial acts. In doing so, this dissertation used the theories of affective expectancies and attitude toward the ad to explain the possible influences of expectancies on responses to persuasive messages. The main experiment employed a 3 (valence of affective expectancy: positive, negative, no expectancy) x 2 (valence of social marketing messages: positive, negative) x 2 (cognitive load: high, low) between-subjects factorial experiment to examine the influence of affective expectancies on feelings, attitudes, and behaviors. Overall, the findings from this research suggest some evidence that affective expectancies do in fact influence responses to social marketing messages in terms of feelings, attitudes, and behavior, though not necessarily in the predicted pattern. Affective expectancies directly influenced feelings and compassion while indirectly influencing attitudes and behaviors. Affective expectancies also interacted with the valence of the social marketing message and cognitive load to influence attitudes toward the prosocial behavior. The implications of these effects on persuasive messages, through which prosocial behavior can be influenced, are discussed.
- Date of publication
- December 2011
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Kalyanaraman, Sriram
- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Graduation year
- 2011
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