Lecture 1: Arousal

Lecture 1: Arousal

1. physiological and psychological ready state of the body for reaction

   • regulates consciousness, attention, and information processing - the basis of emotions, motivation and behavioral actions
     • Tonic Arousal - Refers to relatively slow changes of base - level arousal
     • Phasic Arousal - Stimulus-related more short-lived
       • Emotional, cognitive, and physical stimuli can increase phasic arousal

2. The Yerkes and Dodson Hypothesis

   • Performance Increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point. When levels of arousal become to high, performance decreases.
     • peak performance is achieved when people experience a moderate level of pressure. When they expereince too much or too little pressure, their performance declines, sometimes severely.
   • Left Side: People are under-challenged.Middle: Working at peak effectiveness/ sufficiently motivated/ But not overloaded. Right Side: overwhelmed by volume/ scale of competing demands on their attention/ start to panic.
     • Measure arousal: Electrodermal Response - measures changes in kin conductivity/ easy set up + low costs

3. Types of Stimuli

   • Challenge 1: When too much effort is put into creating arousal, message comprehension and brand associations might suffer.
     • Challenge 2: When too much effort is put into creating arousal, subjects might become 'overactivated'
       • If arousal is too high it diminishes subjects' reliance on cues that are cognitively demanding (Pham 1996)
     • Sexually explicit ad stimuli tend to lower copy point recall. Good comprehension is vital for persuasion to occur. (Severnm Belch and Belch 1990)

4. Arousal and Attention

   • Selective attention is governed by our arousal level
     • People are subject to encode arousing information than neutral information.
       • High arousal levels can be enduring although individuals do no longer to the arousing stimulus.

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