Mix is Different from Nix: Mouse Tracking Differentiates Ambivalence from Neutrality

Ambivalence, the activation of both positive and negative thoughts and feelings regarding a single attitude object, plays a role in many domains in people's lives. For instance, people can be ambivalent about societal topics, health, politics, family, and even their partners. Recently, mouse tracking has been introduced as a novel and innovative way to examine ambivalence. Although initial findings showed that mouse tracking can indeed track ambivalence in designs comparing ambivalence to positivity or negativity (i.e., univalence), it is hitherto unclear whether mouse tracking can also differentiate between ambivalence and neutrality. This is important because a) ambivalence and neutrally have distinctly different patterns of motivational activation, and b) if mouse trajectories are the same, mouse tracking might not track ambivalence, but rather difficulty or uncertainty. In this paper, we examine whether neutrality can be distinguished from ambivalence in mouse tracking paradigms. Two-hundred fifty participants evaluated neutral, ambivalent, and univalent stimuli as either positive or negative, while their mouse movements were recorded. After this, they rated the same stimuli on different self-report measures of ambivalence. First, our findings show that mouse tracking can distinguish ambivalence from univalence, replicating previous findings. More importantly, we find distinctly different patterns for ambivalent vs. neutral stimuli, demonstrating that mouse tracking can also distinguish ambivalence from neutrality. Our findings further establish mouse tracking as an innovative tool that helps researchers further their understanding of ambivalence.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

This study explores how motivational activation influences real-time selection behavior during picture viewing on a computer. We measured the trait level motivational reactivity (ASA and DSA) of 40 participants, who then viewed a series of pictures. Each participant was given the opportunity to select a new picture of either similar or different valence as the picture currently viewed. We recorded indicators of participants’ selection behavior: their propensity to change picture valence, ratio of pleasant to unpleasant pictures selected, and decision time (how long it took them to decide on the valence of the next picture). Results showed that motivational activation predicts each of these behavioral indicators, leading to some preliminary implications for online user experience as well as the suggestion that media outlets might consider variance in motivational activation when selecting online content.

Learned effects of structural components of newscasts on viewers’ information processing: The case of Stings

This article proposes that syntactic features of newscasts can act as learned motivational stimuli determining both viewers’ attention and memory for information. An experiment was conducted in which we manipulated the presence of stings (a type of widely used audiovisual connector) and the arousal levels of stories, while participants’ attention and recall of information were measured. The results suggest that stings elicit motivational activation among viewers; however, differences in motivational activation were observed depending on whether it was due to arousing content or to stings. These results highlight the relevance of accounting for learned motivational processes in media information processing research.