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Your Eyes Do Not Lie! Dissecting Humor Effects in Health Messages Using Eye Tracker Technology

In the past decade, humor in scientific research has become more and more popular providing an increase of data identifying the context in which humor is a promising communication strategy in preventive health messages. To avoid the limits of declarative responses usually recorded in past studies, e...

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Autores principales: Brigaud, Emmanuelle, Lafont, Alex, Blanc, Nathalie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8203314/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34136451
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.653584
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author Brigaud, Emmanuelle
Lafont, Alex
Blanc, Nathalie
author_facet Brigaud, Emmanuelle
Lafont, Alex
Blanc, Nathalie
author_sort Brigaud, Emmanuelle
collection PubMed
description In the past decade, humor in scientific research has become more and more popular providing an increase of data identifying the context in which humor is a promising communication strategy in preventive health messages. To avoid the limits of declarative responses usually recorded in past studies, eye tracker technology offers the possibility to assess and dissect the effects of humor on visual attention. In this brief report, we first attempt to extend the results of previous studies by recording eye movements while participants were exposed to humorous and nonhumorous print health ads dealing with tobacco and alcohol consumption. A secondary purpose is specifically to test the visual attention French women devoted to humorous tobacco preventive ads, the worrying results of recent studies urging to find a way to improve tobacco preventive campaigns. Based on three complementary eye-tracking measures (i.e., total dwell time, fixation count, and revisits), the results showed that humorous health messages were scanned longer and more frequently and revisited more often compared to nonhumorous ones. In addition, humor appeared to reduce smokers' avoidance of preventive tobacco messages. The different pattern of visual exploration confirms that humor is a good strategy to grab attention even of individuals who are involved in the health topic addressed. In short, this paper argues for introducing lightness into a very serious subject, health communication, based on the analysis of eye movement evidence.
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spelling pubmed-82033142021-06-15 Your Eyes Do Not Lie! Dissecting Humor Effects in Health Messages Using Eye Tracker Technology Brigaud, Emmanuelle Lafont, Alex Blanc, Nathalie Front Public Health Public Health In the past decade, humor in scientific research has become more and more popular providing an increase of data identifying the context in which humor is a promising communication strategy in preventive health messages. To avoid the limits of declarative responses usually recorded in past studies, eye tracker technology offers the possibility to assess and dissect the effects of humor on visual attention. In this brief report, we first attempt to extend the results of previous studies by recording eye movements while participants were exposed to humorous and nonhumorous print health ads dealing with tobacco and alcohol consumption. A secondary purpose is specifically to test the visual attention French women devoted to humorous tobacco preventive ads, the worrying results of recent studies urging to find a way to improve tobacco preventive campaigns. Based on three complementary eye-tracking measures (i.e., total dwell time, fixation count, and revisits), the results showed that humorous health messages were scanned longer and more frequently and revisited more often compared to nonhumorous ones. In addition, humor appeared to reduce smokers' avoidance of preventive tobacco messages. The different pattern of visual exploration confirms that humor is a good strategy to grab attention even of individuals who are involved in the health topic addressed. In short, this paper argues for introducing lightness into a very serious subject, health communication, based on the analysis of eye movement evidence. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC8203314/ /pubmed/34136451 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.653584 Text en Copyright © 2021 Brigaud, Lafont and Blanc. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Public Health
Brigaud, Emmanuelle
Lafont, Alex
Blanc, Nathalie
Your Eyes Do Not Lie! Dissecting Humor Effects in Health Messages Using Eye Tracker Technology
title Your Eyes Do Not Lie! Dissecting Humor Effects in Health Messages Using Eye Tracker Technology
title_full Your Eyes Do Not Lie! Dissecting Humor Effects in Health Messages Using Eye Tracker Technology
title_fullStr Your Eyes Do Not Lie! Dissecting Humor Effects in Health Messages Using Eye Tracker Technology
title_full_unstemmed Your Eyes Do Not Lie! Dissecting Humor Effects in Health Messages Using Eye Tracker Technology
title_short Your Eyes Do Not Lie! Dissecting Humor Effects in Health Messages Using Eye Tracker Technology
title_sort your eyes do not lie! dissecting humor effects in health messages using eye tracker technology
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8203314/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34136451
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.653584
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