Sight-Sound Links

Did you know that our environment affects how we read and process information. This is a handy bit of information for advertisers, designers, or anyone trying to enhance their messaging to their readers. So, for instance, if you’re lobbying the government, consider where they are reading it; if you are pitching to parents, consider where they will likely be consuming your flyer or visual advert.

Neo, Shepley, and Niederdeppe collected data in “two noise (High: 75dB L_Aeq, low: 30dB L_Aeq) and two message (noise-related visual cue or not) conditions.

Half of the respondents saw a flyer with a noise-related visual cue (an emoji with both hands to its ears) while the other half saw a flyer without such a cue (an emoji without hands or ears). . . . a message with a noise-related visual cue placed in a noisy physical environment produced a higher ME [message elaboration] score than a message without such a cue in a noisy physical environment. . . . . This suggests the potential for . . . communicators to enhance the effectiveness of strategic messages by designing them in ways that consider physical environmental attributes in which they are likely to be experienced.”

Message elaboration (ME) was described as “an indicator of the depth of engagement with the message.

Jun Neo, Mardelle Shepley, and Jeff Niederdeppe.  “Does Message Content Interact with the Physical Environment?  An Exploratory Study on the Influence of Noise and Noise-Related Visual Cues on Message Elaboration.”  Journal of Environmental Psychology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101657