2009/06/01 by Kevin Wise, Petya Eckler, Anastasia Kononova +1
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Behavioral Health and Interventions #Climate Change Communication and Perception #Media Influence and Health
paper · doi:10.1080/10510970902956024
openalex publication_date 2009/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This study explored how the proximity of threatening health news affects cognition and emotion through a 2 (Proximity: High/Low) × 4 (Topic) fractional experiment. Fifty-one participants read four news stories about either local or distant health threats, with their heart rate, skin conductance, and corrugator electromyography recorded. Results showed that high-proximity health threats elicited greater heart rate deceleration than did low-proximity health threats, indicating greater allocation of automatic resources to encoding high-proximity threats. Recognition data demonstrated that details from high-proximity health threats were recognized more accurately than details from low-proximity health threats. There were no significant effects of proximity on either skin conductance levels or corrugator activation. These results are discussed in terms of Shoemaker's (1996 Shoemaker , P. J. ( 1996 ). Hardwired for news: Using biological and cultural evolution to explain the surveillance function . Journal of Communication , 46 ( 3 ), 32 – 47 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) hardwired for news hypothesis and A. Lang's (2000 Lang , A. ( 2000 ). The limited capacity model of mediated message processing . Journal of Communication , 50 , 46 – 70 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2006 Lang , A. ( 2006 ). Using the limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing to design effective cancer communication messages . Journal of Communication , 56 , S57 – S80 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) limited capacity model.