Effects of Disturbing Televised Events on the Acquisition of Information from Subsequently Presented Commercials

Abstract

Male and female respondents were exposed to a television news program containing commercials. Immediately following exposure to either an emotionally disturbing or an innocuous, affectively neutral news story, respondents watched a sequence of standard news items mixed with commercials. The placement of 30-second commercials was systematically varied through three time slots: immediately following the experimental pretreatment (0.0–0.5 min); delayed by two minutes (2.0–2.5 min); or delayed by four minutes (4.0–4.5 min). A surprise recognition/recall test, measuring information acquisition of the content of the commercials, was administered. Compared with the control condition, the acquisition of information from the commercials following the emotionally charged, disturbing story was significantly poorer for a period of two and one-half minutes. No appreciable difference in information acquisition was observed thereafter. The apparent impairment of information acquisition, processing, and retrieval is discussed in terms of emotion theory. Implications for the placement of commercials in news and entertainment programs are also considered.