Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Understanding how people process emotional messages has been of interest to both communication researchers and message producers. Television and many other media are full of emotional content. Research on this topic has suggested that emotional messages receive more attention and are remembered better compared to neutral (i.e., non-emotional) messages. However, different theoretical approaches to emotion have been taken. Further, emotion as well as attention and memory, the dependent measures, have been measured in various ways including self-report methods. The limitations of using a self-report method to measure these hypothetical constructs have begun to be noticed. One of the assumptions is that people are not always aware of their emotions (thus not necessarily conscious experiences). Recent theoretical and methodological advances made in areas such as psychophysiology and cognitive neuroscience have expanded research on emotion and contributed to the existing knowledge enormously. This paper reviewed research on emotion in cognitive neuroscience to answer the questions that have been asked by many communication researchers. The studies favor the dimensional view of emotion over the categorical view, but suggest the functions of positivity and negativity activate independently rather than reciprocally. By examining the areas these emotional sites are connected to, research shows that negative and positive messages receive priorities in selection for cognitive processing than neutral messages.