MyFace

Students at Allegheny College spend all 4 years on campus trying to come up with an idea for their comp and I am no different. I really hadn't come up with any real concrete ideas, I just knew that I wanted an idea that pertained to me. I wanted a topic that deals with behaviors that I exhibit. And then I reHowever, for this blog, I decided to deal with humor and the necessity of emoticons to display it.

I've been thinking about what I want to do for my comp for a while now, and frankly, I'm having trouble deciding what I want to do. I've run countless ideas through my brain trying to see them all from a million different angles, and all I end up doing is sitting there scratching my head. However, I do tend to find myself looking up information on schizophrenia and the brain areas and functions associated with it. For example, the frontal and prefrontal cortices are the most common. These control our everyday organizational and management functions. Specifically of interest to me is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which "executes high functions such as working memory, differentiation of conflicting thoughts, determination of right and wrong concepts, correct social behavior and personality expression" (Martins-de-Souza, 2008). Since these behaviors/functions play a major role in our everyday lives, I'm curious to see how people with schizophrenia fare in our fast-paced and judgemental world and what the mechanisms are that may affect their lives in relation to ours.

Here's a link to an article that piqued my interest.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T8T-4V6YT59-2&_user=637333&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000034061&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=637333&md5=b4ca0abf5c109442fbcdafb3c70d1333

For my Exploring the field entry, I decided to look at a study about consuming products when music is involved in an advertisement. I chose this article because I am interested in looking at how we connect or disconnect with advertisers through media. This article opens up with a brief literature and theoretical view of the research that has been done on the topic. This research has revealed that the likelihood that a person will buy into an advertisement is dependent on the logistics the background song present, that is, the song's rhythm, tempo, musical key, and so on. In addition, consumers typically are more attracted to ads that simply advance the product with the help of music. This study focused on the musical feelings as well as the moods of the subjects and whether or not they are congruent with the purchase occasions of advertisement slides. One of the most interesting points of the article was the method section. I thought that the manipulation of the music and cards were valid; however, I do question the fact that the researchers took a convenience sample from marketing students of southwestern colleges rather than a truly random sample. Nevertheless, researchers found that when there was a consistency between a happy-occasioned slide and a happy song, the consumer was more likely to purchase the product. This motivation was attributed to the enhanced mood of the person, which was predicted as a hypothesis earlier in the article.

The real question here is: Are we just being led around like little kids by our Big Brother?

Article Link

Brumbaugh's work on the effects of source and nonsource cues in both subculture and mainstream culture is very much about the kind of psychological aspects that I am interested in. The activation of either mainstream of subcultural ideas are part of a number of schemas that are learned through social interactions with others. In other words, Brumbaugh's article combines both of my disciplines (psychology and communications) into her study. In the experiment, white Americans represented the mainstream and black Americans were chosen as the subculture because they represented the essence of an American subculture. Brumbaugh also conducted pretests in order to make sure that the activation of cultural beliefs would be because of advertising stimuli. These pretests were conducted via focus groups. Participants were then assigned to one of four groups that were cross-coded with culture of participant, nonsource cues, and culture sources. Brumbaugh found that both white and black Americans reacted to advertising stimuli consistent with dominant culture models the same way. However, white sources that were paired with black nonsource cues were not as favorable. Brumbaugh's main argument in this piece suggests that dominant and subcultural groups react the same to dominant culture source and nonsource ads because they contain a shared cultural knowledge of society.

With the introduction section reaching its completion, a few problems have occurred. This topic may be a little more difficult to research than I initially anticipated. However, at this point in time, I think that I can still manage the situation.

Since the beginning of this semester, I have put considerable time and effort into the formation of my research question. I feel as though I have developed a good question to use at least for the preliminary stages of the process. Despite the progress that I have semester, the studies that I have found at this point in the process does not do a thorough job of defending my thesis.

With the struggles that I have encountered during the preliminary research phases of my comp, I have begun to examine other possible topics of study that still deal with different motivation in different ways other than drinking. I have thought of an idea that I will need to research a little more to determine if switching my topic is the most beneficial move that I can make.

At this point, my comp project has taken a number of different turns. Most of these changes deal with logistical issues (i.e. time lines for experimental projects in the fall) that are simply not practical right now. However, I have not changed my methodological approach for the project very much. Thus, I am still looking at persuasion and attitude formation.

A study by Olsen and Thjomoe (2003) looked at advertising brand processing on mere exposure and additional elements of exposure within low involvement groups. The goal of the study was to discern which route of persuasion (central or peripheral) would be triggered as a result of the conditions. Participants consisted of undergrad business students who viewed slide shows of advertisements varying in detail. One of the greatest strengths of this study was that the brands shown were fictional and realistic and the information in the ads also varied with little or a lot of information. Results showed that mere exposure to a brand created a more favorable opinion of the brand with participants in low involvement. In order to trigger peripheral processing, additional information was added to each of the brands. Participants used this information as a cue for inference when evaluating a brand.

A methodological concern with this study I had was that the sample only included college students and did not include any part of the population. In addition, the study was set up specifically for low involvement with the brand; however, I would be interested to see how a high involvement study would have turned out. Nevertheless, the study is an excellent piece of literature for my ongoing research project into ELM and attitude formation.

Olson, E., & Thjomoe, H. (2003). The effects of peripheral exposure to information on brand preference. European Journal of Marketing, 37(1), 243-255.