Can better linguistic fluency improve the memorability and credibility of a sentence?
subject: Linguistic Fluency, Alliteration, Advertising,Memory,Credibility
description: Processing fluency is often defined as how easy information is to comprehend based on a range of characteristics. One form of processing fluency is linguistic fluency, which refers to how easy a sentence is to interpret, regardless of the information within it. Some research suggests that disfluency can increase the recall of material, but this is contested. Previous studies have also shown that the linguistic fluency of a sentence can be improved with literary devices, such as rhyme, and that this can result in better perceptions of credibility. Research has yet to investigate how alliteration, as an example of linguistic fluency, could improve perceptions of credibility and the memorability of a sentence. This research investigated this by operationalising lists of alliterating and non-alliterating aphorisms, alongside measures of self-reported credibility and memorability, in a between-subjects study. Results of two independent t-tests provided two significant results, suggesting that better linguistic fluency improves the credibility and memorability of a sentence. Implications for researchers, the legal system and advertising are discussed.
creator: Hamish Bromley
source: Materials The preliminary five aphorisms were provided by Astroten with five further aphorisms being added to increase the power of the study. Aphorisms that were selected came from various literary examples, such as quotes from English Literature (Williams, 2011). Alternatively, some aphorisms were created using the definition “a short clever saying that is intended to express a general truth” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2022). The most common alliterating aphorisms, such as “All roads lead to Rome”, were purposefully avoided so that the effect of familiarity had a reduced effect on the memorability self-report. When creating the non-alliterating aphorisms, alliterating words were exchanged for non-alliterating words using a thesaurus so that the change in alliterative properties did not affect the overall meaning. The alliterating and non-alliterating aphorisms were kept divided into two different lists and were counterbalanced in a random order for each participant (Appendix C). Participants were asked to rate the credibility of the aphorisms based on a Likert scale of 1-9, in parallel with the scale used by McGlone and Tofighbakhsh (1999). Participants were asked to complete two games of Sudoku as a filler task (Appendix D). The grids were designed so that participants would begin with the easier version and move on to a more challenging version to ensure that the task occupied the full amount of time. Instructions were provided so that those who were unfamiliar with the game were still able to attempt the task. 18 Additionally, participants were given a piece of paper with 10 individual sections to write down as many of the aphorisms as they could remember at the end of the study. They were also provided with a pen, and time was kept using a watch. Design This study used a between-subjects design. This was chosen because there was a strong chance that order effects would impact the results of the memory test in a repeated measures design, due to the similarity betwe…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 07.09.2022
contributor: Cyrus
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Excel/xlsx.
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

The roles of reading motivation and reading strategies in secondary school students’ reading comprehension
subject: reading comprehension; reading inference; reading motivation; expository and narrative texts; secondary school
description: The aim of the study was to investigate comprehension and inference ability in relation to text genre, reading strategies, intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation, and gender in mainstream secondary school UK students. Data were collected from a sample of 27 participants; retained data of 9 secondary school students (5 males, 4 females) data were used for the study analysis. These responses were used to inform a simulated dataset for the analysis. The participants completed an online study, which measured their intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation The Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ; Wang & Guthrie, 2004), comprehension and inference ability of narrative and expository texts (Currie et al., 2021), and reading strategies (Denton, Wolters, et al., 2015). Due to sample size limitations the decision was made to simulate individual datasets for reading strategies, intrinsic reading motivation, extrinsic reading motivation, narrative texts, and expository texts by gender, following the simulation methods proposed by Muldoon (2019). The results of the study revealed that female participants scored lower on reading strategies and demonstrated poorer performance for narrative and expository texts. There was no gender difference found for reading motivation. These findings will be discussed in relation to our understanding of gender differences in inferential reading comprehension, reading motivation and practical implications for the classroom.
creator: Anastasija Jumatova
source: Participants The intention was to collect original data from UK Year 7, 8, 9, and 10 mainstream secondary school students. This was through schools and word of mouth. Unfortunately, schools who were approached were not able distribute the study information in time for data collection before the summer break. In total 27 students started the study and completed data was collected from 9 (5 males, 4 females; M age = 13.83 years, SD = 2.45). These data were used to inform a simulated dataset to test the study predictions.
source: Materials Reading Motivation To assess students’ reading motivation 7 out of 8 domains from “The Motivation for Reading Questionnaire” (MRQ): A Revised Version (Wang & Guthrie, 2004) were used (grades domain from extrinsic scale was removed). The forty-one-question scale measured extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation consisted of three domains: curiosity (7 items), involvement (7 items), and preference for challenge (5 items). Seven scales (curiosity, involvement, challenge, recognition, social and competition) reported good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha ˃ .70; Wang and Guthrie, 2004). An example of intrinsic motivation item: “I enjoy a long, involved story or fiction book”. Extrinsic motivation measured the following four domains: recognition (5 items), social (7 items), competition (6 items), and compliance (4 items). An example of extrinsic motivation item: “I like having my friends sometimes tell me I am a good reader”. Each statement had four possible answers, which were assigned values from 0 to 3 (very different from me = 0, a little different from me = 1, a little like me = 2, a lot like me = 3), and participants were asked to select the most appropriate for them. Scoring for negative item 40 was reversed before assigning the values. Text Genre Participants were asked to read 12 narrative, and 12 expository texts. Narrative texts focussed on human characteristics and activities, based on interactions with different social groups, as families, friends, peers at schools and youth clubs. Expository texts, were science-based, underpinned by chemistry, physics, biology, and geology. Each text consisted of 7 sentences, with 2 critical sentences that required an inference in order to integrate their meanings. The distance between two critical sentences was varied – either adjacent or separated by up to 3 sentences of filler text to minimise the detection of any pattern by readers, which might result in a focus on just the critical senten…
source: Procedure The study was hosted on Qualtrics platform. First, the parents/ guardians accessed the study via a link, then they provided their consent. The child saw the next screen, where they read the information about the study and provided their assent. Participants were asked to complete the task at home in their own time, outside of their school commitment time. Participants were asked to provide information about their gender, age - month and year only. Task order was: (1) reading strategies, (2) narrative texts with yes/no questions about the texts, (3) expository texts with yes/no questions about the texts, and (4) intrinsic and extrinsic reading questionnaire. For the reading strategies questionnaire, participants were asked to read 3 scenarios, as described above. They read each scenario and then indicated on a 4-point Likert scale how frequently they used each strategy. To assess inference making, participants read 12 short narrative texts, and also 12 short expository texts. Each text was shown on 1 screen with the inference-tapping question on a separate screen. They pressed a button next to YES or NO to provide their answer. The final task required participants to complete a reading motivation questionnaire. They read 19 statements for intrinsic and 22 statements for extrinsic reading motivation, and then indicated on the 4-point Likert scale how likely of them it was, as described above. The whole procedure took approximately 30 minutes. Collected data was stored in password-protected file, on password-protected Master student’s Lancaster University’s Office 360, accessed through password-protected laptop.
source: Ethical Considerations The research was approved by the University Department Ethics Committee, and conducted in line with the Lancaster University ethics guidelines: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/sci-tech/research/ethics/, and the BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct (2018). Measures were taken to maintain the participants’ anonymity: identifiable information as participant’s name, school name, participant’s full date of birth were not collected; with references to data collection in England. To investigate the study purposes of age and gender related differences, participant’s month and year of birth were obtained, and the student’s gender as reported by participant were collected.
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 28/09/2022
contributor: Wai Man Ko, Charlotte Graham
rights: Open
relation: N/A
format: Data/csv.
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA14YF

Can better linguistic fluency improve the memorability and credibility of a sentence?
subject: Linguistic Fluency, Alliteration, Advertising,Memory,Credibility
description: Processing fluency is often defined as how easy information is to comprehend based on a range of characteristics. One form of processing fluency is linguistic fluency, which refers to how easy a sentence is to interpret, regardless of the information within it. Some research suggests that disfluency can increase the recall of material, but this is contested. Previous studies have also shown that the linguistic fluency of a sentence can be improved with literary devices, such as rhyme, and that this can result in better perceptions of credibility. Research has yet to investigate how alliteration, as an example of linguistic fluency, could improve perceptions of credibility and the memorability of a sentence. This research investigated this by operationalising lists of alliterating and non-alliterating aphorisms, alongside measures of self-reported credibility and memorability, in a between-subjects study. Results of two independent t-tests provided two significant results, suggesting that better linguistic fluency improves the credibility and memorability of a sentence. Implications for researchers, the legal system and advertising are discussed.
creator: Hamish Bromley
source: Materials The preliminary five aphorisms were provided by Astroten with five further aphorisms being added to increase the power of the study. Aphorisms that were selected came from various literary examples, such as quotes from English Literature (Williams, 2011). Alternatively, some aphorisms were created using the definition “a short clever saying that is intended to express a general truth” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2022). The most common alliterating aphorisms, such as “All roads lead to Rome”, were purposefully avoided so that the effect of familiarity had a reduced effect on the memorability self-report. When creating the non-alliterating aphorisms, alliterating words were exchanged for non-alliterating words using a thesaurus so that the change in alliterative properties did not affect the overall meaning. The alliterating and non-alliterating aphorisms were kept divided into two different lists and were counterbalanced in a random order for each participant (Appendix C). Participants were asked to rate the credibility of the aphorisms based on a Likert scale of 1-9, in parallel with the scale used by McGlone and Tofighbakhsh (1999). Participants were asked to complete two games of Sudoku as a filler task (Appendix D). The grids were designed so that participants would begin with the easier version and move on to a more challenging version to ensure that the task occupied the full amount of time. Instructions were provided so that those who were unfamiliar with the game were still able to attempt the task. 18 Additionally, participants were given a piece of paper with 10 individual sections to write down as many of the aphorisms as they could remember at the end of the study. They were also provided with a pen, and time was kept using a watch. Design This study used a between-subjects design. This was chosen because there was a strong chance that order effects would impact the results of the memory test in a repeated measures design, due to the similarity betwe…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 07.09.2022
contributor: Coco
rights: Open
relation: Dissertation
format: Excel/xlsx.
language: English
type: Data
coverage: Marketing

Facts May Care About Your Feelings: The Effects of Empirical and Anecdotal Evidence in the Perception of Climate Change
subject: Climate change, communication, perception, emotion, evidence
description: Although the effects of humanmade climate change become ever more potent, the consensus gap between climate scientists and the public is as wide as ever. It is critical that climate change communication is improved to try and close this gap. There are several strategies that can be implemented, including using anecdotes alongside or instead of empirical evidence to elicit emotions. In this study, 74 members of the public completed a survey. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions which dictated the type of evidence they received: no evidence, empirical evidence, anecdotal evidence, or both empirical and anecdotal evidence. Results suggest that, in general, there was no effect of evidence on participants’ perceptions of climate change. This result held even after controlling for worldview and ideology. These findings have implications for the theory of inserting emotion into climate change communication.
creator: Constance Jordan-Turner
source: This study gained ethical approval from the Faculty of Science and Technology Research Ethics Committee. Participants and design There were 74 participants (26 male; 46 female; one non-binary; one preferred not to say). The mean age of the participants was 37.99 (SD = 16.93). Participants were recruited via advertising the study on the researcher’s social media accounts (Facebook and Instagram) using a standardised advertisement (see Appendix A) and through word of mouth. Participants were all members of the general public. The study manipulated two independent variables in a between-participants design: anecdotal evidence (without-anecdotal vs. with-anecdotal) and empirical evidence (without-empirical vs. with empirical), resulting in four conditions. Participants were randomly allocated to one of the four conditions, subject to the constraint of equal cell numbers. Evidence Passages Empirical Evidence The empirical evidence vignette included a statement explaining that human-induced carbon dioxide emissions and global average temperature have synchronously increased since pre-industrial times, accompanied with graphs demonstrating these upward trends. The vignette also highlighted the scientific consensus that humanmade climate change is occurring and will have adverse consequences. Finally, the vignette explained that these adverse consequences had already begun to materialise. The increase of extreme weather events was highlighted in a graph that showed the tripling of weather-related disasters between 1980 and 2010. Finally, the vignette finished with references for the information it contained (see Appendix B). Anecdotal Evidence The anecdotal evidence vignette contained information about Storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin which all made landfall in Britain in quick succession in 2022. The storms were a weather-related event that some scientists have linked to climate change (Barrett, 2022); Specifically, the vignette included information about the storms’ des…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 21/09/2022
contributor: Abigail Travis
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Data/SPSS.sav
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Farmer and Non-Farmer Attitudes towards Alternative Animal Products
subject: farmers, plant-based alternatives, cultured products, COM-B Model, Transtheoretical Model
description: Farmers’ livelihoods and way of living could be argued to be under threat from the simultaneous rapid rise of plant-based products, development of cultured products, and our growing understanding of the detrimental impact of traditional animal agriculture. Little research has investigated farmers attitudes towards cultured and plant-based products. Furthermore, famers appear to have limited awareness of these animal product alternatives. This study presented 45 omnivorous farmers and 53 omnivorous non-farmers with information about plant-based burgers, cultured burgers, plant-based milk, and cultured milk. Product acceptance and COM-B facilitators and barriers were explored. Farmers were less accepting of all alternative products than non-farmers, suggesting that their vested interest in the continuation of traditional animal agriculture affected their attitudes towards alternative products. Closer inspection of farmer acceptance suggests that personal investment in animal agriculture also led to differences within farmers, with occupational farmers being less accepting of the products than the members of farming families. The findings are interpreted using the Transtheoretical Model to suggest that regarding the adoption of alternative products, occupational farmers appear to be in the rejection stage, whereas members of farming families appear to be in the contemplation stage. As occupational farmers had more negative attitudes towards the alternative products, they appear more likely to consider the alternatives a threat to their livelihood.
creator: Chloe Crawshaw
source: Participant Recruitment and Exclusions Participant recruitment followed a pre-registered plan (https://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=QL3_H96). Between July and August 2022 two groups of participants were recruited: adults with experience of livestock farming (Farmers), and a comparison group of adults without experience of livestock farming (Non-Farmers). Farmers make up a very small percentage (0.2%) of the UK population (DEFA, 2021) so we included current farmers, retired farmers, farm workers, and members of farming families. Fifty-five livestock farmers predominately living in Gloucestershire were recruited using snowball sampling. Farmers that were known to the author were first contacted via telephone, social media, or visited in-person. Interested participants were provided with the URL link to the questionnaire, a brief description of the study, and a request to forward the information to other individuals in the farming community. Individuals without internet access received a paper copy of the questionnaire. Sixty-one non-farmers were recruited through snowball sampling in the same method as for farmers. As farmers are typically older males (DEFRA, 2019), we attempted to match the ages of the non farmers to the farmers and effort was taken to recruit female farmers and members of farming families. Our recruitment plan was to recruit a minimum of 40 participants per group. To qualify for the study, farmers and non-farmers had to be omnivores. A further 23 farmers and 10 non-farmers were recruited using Prolific by pre-screening for those in the ‘Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources’ employment sector, the description of the study also encouraged participation among those with “experience of working with farmed animals.” A total of 130 participants consented to participate: 55 farmers, 61 non-farmers, and a further fourteen who were excluded as they did not reach the demographics section so could not be classified into a group. Following our preregistered …
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 23/09/22
contributor: HanYi Wang Amie Suthers
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Data/SPSS.sav
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Facts May Care About Your Feelings: The Effects of Empirical and Anecdotal Evidence in the Perception of Climate Change
subject: Climate change, communication, perception, emotion, evidence
description: Although the effects of humanmade climate change become ever more potent, the consensus gap between climate scientists and the public is as wide as ever. It is critical that climate change communication is improved to try and close this gap. There are several strategies that can be implemented, including using anecdotes alongside or instead of empirical evidence to elicit emotions. In this study, 74 members of the public completed a survey. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions which dictated the type of evidence they received: no evidence, empirical evidence, anecdotal evidence, or both empirical and anecdotal evidence. Results suggest that, in general, there was no effect of evidence on participants’ perceptions of climate change. This result held even after controlling for worldview and ideology. These findings have implications for the theory of inserting emotion into climate change communication.
creator: Constance Jordan-Turner
source: Participants and design There were 74 participants (26 male; 46 female; one non-binary; one preferred not to say). The mean age of the participants was 37.99 (SD = 16.93). Participants were recruited via advertising the study on the researcher’s social media accounts (Facebook and Instagram) using a standardised advertisement (see Appendix A) and through word of mouth. Participants were all members of the general public. The study manipulated two independent variables in a between-participants design: anecdotal evidence (without-anecdotal vs. with-anecdotal) and empirical evidence (without-empirical vs. with empirical), resulting in four conditions. Participants were randomly allocated to one of the four conditions, subject to the constraint of equal cell numbers. This study gained ethical approval from the Faculty of Science and Technology Research Ethics Committee. Participants and design There were 74 participants (26 male; 46 female; one non-binary; one preferred not to say). The mean age of the participants was 37.99 (SD = 16.93). Participants were recruited via advertising the study on the researcher’s social media accounts (Facebook and Instagram) using a standardised advertisement (see Appendix A) and through word of mouth. Participants were all members of the general public. The study manipulated two independent variables in a between-participants design: anecdotal evidence (without-anecdotal vs. with-anecdotal) and empirical evidence (without-empirical vs. with empirical), resulting in four conditions. Participants were randomly allocated to one of the four conditions, subject to the constraint of equal cell numbers. Evidence Passages Empirical Evidence The empirical evidence vignette included a statement explaining that human-induced carbon dioxide emissions and global average temperature have synchronously increased since pre-industrial times, accompanied with graphs demonstrating these upward trends. The vignette also highlighted the scientific consensu…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 21/09/2022
contributor: Sacha Crossley
rights: Open
format: Data/SPSS.sav
language: English
type: Data

Do inward and outward consonants and vowels have different effects on customer’s liking rates towards the brand names?
subject: Consonants, vowels, MacNeilage syllables, brand names, liking rates
description: The origin of speech development starts with the way that infants or children produce their first words. In the early stage of speech acquisition, children tend to produce particular syllables that are low in energy to produce, such as intrasyllabic and intersyllabic consonant-vowel co-occurrence patterns (MacNeilage et al., 2000). Such patterns may have an effect on individual’s preference for words later in life, such as for brand names. More pointedly, according to Topolinski et al. (2014), there is an in-out effect which significantly affect individual’s liking rates towards the brand names that contain inward and outward consonants. However, previous findings have only focused on such effects on consonants, whereas there is insufficient research on the combination effects of consonants and vowels on brand names. Therefore, this study is designed to investigate whether such in-out effects of both consonants and vowels of English brand names have association with customer’s emotional response to the words, as well as whether the involvement of MacNeilage syllables in the brand names are associated with customer’s liking rate. The whole experiment was conducted through an online questionnaire consisting of 360 sound stimuli to test on participant’s liking rate towards the brand names which are non-words with the combination of inward and outward consonants and vowels, and Macneilage syllables. Results of the study showed that liking rates towards the brand names are significantly increased for the ones that include inward consonants and vowels, while lower liking rates were associated with outward consonants and vowels. Not to mention, no significant relationship was found between the number of MacNeilage syllables and one’s preference towards the brand names, yet individuals had higher preference for brand names that contained MacNeilage syllables as the first syllable of the word.
creator: Keung Wang Shan
source: Participants A total of 51 participants who spoke different first languages were recruited through researcher’s family and friends as well as invited via SONA. They were all healthy individuals with normal vision and hearing, all aged 18 or above with no health conditions. The participants included 23 males and 28 females, with the age range from 22 to 28 and a mean age of 23.33, SD=. Materials The study was carried out as an online questionnaire which consisted of four open ended questions at the beginning and 360 questions with a 10-point Likert scale to display the answers. The whole questionnaire was based on the liking rate of the brand names that were presented as sound stimuli displayed in the questionnaire. The first four open ended questions were designed to ask participants’ age, gender, first language and whether they speak other languages (see Appendix D). Next, 360 questions each containing an audio of a sound stimulus that was between one to three seconds were presented in the questionnaire (see Appendix D). All sound stimuli were recorded by the researcher’s supervisor who was a native English speaker with a Northern English accent with training in phonology beforehand, which were also produced in a monotone. Within the 360 sound stimuli, they were divided into six different sets which included six combinations of inward and outward consonants and vowels. The total six sets of stimuli included nonwords that contained consonants that required the articulation from front to the middle to back of the mouth (inward) (FMB), from front to back to middle (FBM), from middle to front to back (MFB), from middle to back to front (MBF), from back to middle to front (outward) (BMF) and from back to front to middle (BFM). There was a total of 60 stimuli with the same articulation of consonants and different articulation of vowels in each set, and 10 stimuli with the same articulation of both consonants and vowels in each set. Within each set of the same articulatio…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 5/9/2022
contributor: Keung Wang Shan
rights: open
relation: none
format: Data/Excel.csv Data/R.r
language: english
type: data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Do trustworthiness judgements help people to recognise synthetic faces?
subject: StyleGAN, synthetic face, trustworthiness perception, facial trustworthiness
description: Recent advances in digital image generative models have allowed for artificial creation of fake imagery such as synthesising highly photorealistic human faces. Style-based Generative Adversarial Networks (StyleGAN) is one of the most state-of-the-art generative models in this field, and has been widely used on facial image generation. However, with the increasing ease of using such image generative models, the security in many domains, such as forensic, border control and mass media, is vulnerable in front of the potential threats resulted from the misuse of image generative technologies. To date there has only been limited empirical research into the facial characteristics of StyleGAN-generated faces to support the design of detection methods against such synthetic faces. This study used StyleGAN2 (an improved version of StyleGAN) to generate faces and invited people to complete two facial image evaluation tasks, 1) Discrimination task, 2) Trustworthiness rating task. The study results demonstrated that, in the discrimination task, subjects had trouble recognising synthetic faces by direct/explicit judgement; while in the trustworthiness rating task, subjects perceived the synthetic faces as significantly more trustworthy than real faces. The study further analysed gender bias and ethnicity bias on the perception of facial trustworthiness, with results showing some differences between different levels of gender and ethnicity. In conclusion, people’s ability to recognise synthetic faces is poor, but it is possible that people rely on the perception of facial trustworthiness to discriminate synthetic from real faces. The findings in this study have implications for the development of detection methods against digitally generated faces.
creator: Haisa Shan
source: Subjects and design Three hundred and fifty-seven subjects (114 males, mean age = 25.2, SD = 5.8; 227 females, mean age = 25.0, SD = 6.3; 10 non-binary, mean age = 23.6, SD = 8.93) were recruited to complete an online survey test delivered on www.qualtrics.com. The responses of subjects who started but did not complete the online survey were eliminated to avoid distorting the research results. We used computer-synthesised facial images in this research as fake faces, mixed with real faces to examine people’s ability to detect fake faces and perceptual differences of trustworthiness between real/fake faces. Subjects did not get rewards for their participation, though they could see the test score of their performances at the end of the survey. The Qualtrics survey was based on a within-subjects design in which all subjects viewed the same two sets of adult facial images and completed each of the two tasks. To eliminate the effect of between-sets difference, the use of each image sets was counterbalanced in the individual test for each subject. Before the survey started, all subjects provided informed consent and completed a demographic questionnaire about their age, gender, ethnicity. In terms of the experimental power of 0.8 and significance level of 0.05, with a small effect, the power calculation indicated that the study needed at least 198 subjects. Stimuli A total of thirty-two human facial images (1024×1024 resolution), including 16 real and 16 synthetic faces, were used as stimuli in the survey. All real faces were taken from a publicly available dataset for high-quality human facial images, Flickr-Faces-HQ (FFHQ), which is created as a benchmark for GAN (see https://github.com/NVlabs/ffhq-dataset), and all synthetic faces were gained from the dataset of the generative image modeling, StyleGAN2 (see https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan2). To ensure a diverse dataset, in each of the two sets of faces, there were 4 Black, 4 East Asian, 4 South Asian, 4 White, and …
publisher: Haisa Shan
date: 8 September 2021
contributor: Haisa Shan
rights: Open
relation: None
format: data/Excel.csv
language: English
type: Data
coverage: None

The impact of retribution on perception of transgressor by others
description: Emotions play a key role in within society, behaviour and human life with moral emotions such as guilt, regret and shame being able to influence individuals’ judgments and actions. For example, a person who experiences guilt will want to fix their wrongdoing that has caused this. There are times where these efforts to repair ones transgression, can lead an individual to self-punish in order to repair bonds with others and reduce negative consequences of the situation. The present study experimentally investigated the effect of self-punishment intensity on perceptions of a transgressor. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions of self-punishment intensity (low, correct and high). Vignettes were manipulated for each condition and presented for participants to read for them to answer questions on their judgments of the transgressor (perceptions of guilt, shame, regret, moral character, and trustworthiness, their willingness to forgive the transgressor, how likely they thought they would reoffend in the future) and rated this on a Likert scale of 0-5. Participants allocated to low self-punishment had more negative perceptions towards the transgressor overall when compared to correct self-punishment. However, this was not found beyond this as no differences were seen for those within the high self-punishment condition
creator: Olivia Wilson
source: Participants. Participants were recruited through the use of LU Sona system as well as opportunity sampling through use of social media and network platforms accessible. A total of 174 responses were collected via Qualtrics, of those 158 have been successfully completed through to the end whilst 16 have only been started and answered few questions at most. Therefore, the decision has been made to exclude any incomplete attempts. This resulted in a final sample of 158 of which 54 are in the high punishment condition, 52 in low punishment condition and 52 in correct punishment. Design. This is a one-factor study with 3 levels (self-punishment: Low punishment, correct punishment, and high punishment) between-subjects design. Qualtrics randomly allocated participants to one of the three conditions. Materials. A short hypothetical vignette was used to describe an event between two individuals; ‘Simon’ the transgressor and his friend, who he steals money from. With each of the punishment conditions, the vignette introduced the scenario with the same starting sentences to create the scene of someone performing a transgression against their friend with feelings of self-directed negative affect presented by the transgressor: Simon is out with his friends when he noticed that a member of his group has left their wallet unattended. Simon helps himself to the £40 that was in the wallet. His friend eventually realises that the money has been stolen and seems distressed. The next day, Simon feels bad for his actions and confesses to his friend that he took the money. The final sentence of the vignettes was manipulated for each of the three conditions. The sentence stated the amount of money returned to Simon’s friend, which was either less than originally taken (low punishment, £20), same amount (correct punishment, £40) or more than originally taken (high punishment, £60). He gives his friend all the money he has in his wallet, which came to £20 (or £40, or £60). Hypothetical vi…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 2021
contributor: Anastasija Jumatova
rights: Open (unless stated otherwise)
relation: None (unless stated otherwise)
format: Data R AStudio .csv
language: English
type: Data and Text

Exporing the Effect of Visual Complexity on Recall
subject: #visualcomplexity #recall #free-recall #cued-recall #advertisements #simple #complex
description: This study was conducted to explore the effect of visual complexity on an individuals` recall of product brands and their attributes in either simple or complex adverts . Within the field of visual complexity, there has been contradiction as to whether complexity helps or hinders recall, this study aims to resolve this question. A survey was conducted to measure their free and cued recall for adverts that varied in their visual complexity. The complex advertisements were defined as having three objects included whilst the simple advertisements had only one object included. This was decided to align with the industry standard for defining visual complexity as set by Attneave (1954), Snodgrass & Vanderwart (1980) and Chikhman et al., (2012). A percentage scoring system was used to compare overall memory performance. The data showed that those in the simple condition performed better compared to those in the complex condition. However, this was not the case for every individual. The results found the effects of complexity to be marginally significant (p < 0.09); however, the study had limited power, and a replication with a larger population could provide a more complete picture of the influence of the independent variable. Whilst this study does not provide a definitive conclusion towards the effect of visual complexity, it does explore and provide an insight into the effects of complexity on recall of product attributes in advertisements.
creator: Hayleigh Proctor
source: PARTICIPANTS The larger the number of participants in a study, the better-protected results will be from extraneous variables. For this reason, the participants were collected through random snowball sampling (Emerson, 2015). Each condition had 22 participants, a minimum age of 16 being the only participation condition. The participants were randomly allocated to each one of the four experimental conditions, providing 88 total participants (N= 88). There were no gender requirements for participation (Females (N = 47), Males (N = 31), Other (N = 4)). The majority of participants were born in the U.K. (N = 46) or Poland (N = 35). The majority are currently residing in England (N = 57) or Poland (N = 21), but responses were still collected from further afield, such as France and the U.S.A. (N = 10). The majority of participants fell into the two youngest age categories, 16 to 18-year-olds (N = 22) and 22 to 27-year-olds (N = 37). General demographic information provided insight into the advertisement exposure in participants' generic routines. The majority of participants were native English speakers (N = 49). The majority of participants use streaming services (N = 76), of which just under half of the respondents said their service had adverts (N = 38). Participants also use ad blockers (N = 49). Just over a quarter of participants use cable T.V. (N = 27). When asked whether they pay for premium applications, the majority said ‘never’ (N = 60), occasionally (N = 16), sometimes (N = 9), usually (N = 2), whilst only one participant always pays for premium applications (N = 1). MATERIALS Firstly, two product categories were chosen, bottled water and soap bars, four brands were then selected per category (see table 1). There were 16 advertisements in total, eight for the simple and complex conditions, respectively. (APPENDIX A) The editing software Gimp was used to design the advertisements to enable the selected products to be presented in the controlled advert setting. …
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 08/09/2021
contributor: Lydia Brooks
rights: Open
relation: Field of visual complexity
format: Data/SPSS.sav
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YW