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Abstract
This research investigates the effects of the relationship between imagery ability and pictorial appeal on vividness perception, free recall, and attitude. To investigate the potential effects of HPV vaccine advertising in mainland China, we conducted an experiment using a sample of 147 college female students who were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. The results of the analyses showed that pictorial appeal and imagery ability exerts a joint impact on vividness perception, recall, and attitude. The subjects with high-imagery ability perceived more vividness when pictorial appeal was absent, whereas the cognitive performance of the subjects with low-imagery ability was mainly enhanced by pictorial presence. We found that whether a message was perceived as vivid or not was more a function of imagery ability than an attribute of the message. In addition, the findings indicated that vividness perception mediated this moderating effect. The implications for health communication theory and education are discussed.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. We would also like to extend our gratitude to Professor Charles Feng for his kind assistance in the statistical analysis part of our research.
Notes
1. Because the HPV vaccine has not yet been legalized in mainland China, official promotional materials do not exist, either online or offline. Therefore, the information about the HPV vaccine in this study was downloaded from the Hong Kong government's website. Although this was done solely for expediency, we have no reasons to expect systematic errors arising from using this source.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Fan Yang
Fan Yang is an MPhil graduate of the School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research focuses on the theoretical connections between message attributes and audience perceptions.
Steve Guo
Steve Guo is a professor at the Department of Journalism, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University. His published research spans message production, content analysis, and audience effects.