How Listening Versus Reading Alters Consumers’ Interpretations of News
研究发现，听新闻（相比读新闻）的人更难控制信息流入速度，从而更关注负面情绪内容，导致对混合信息（如产品风险与收益）形成更悲观的印象。
This research investigates how listening to versus reading news alters its interpretation. A proposed theory argues that because listeners (vs. readers) are less able to regulate the rate of incoming information, they selectively attend to the more emotionally arousing elements in a story, such as those that are more negative. This selective attention leads listeners to form different interpretations of news than readers, the nature of which depend on the valence of the story. Six main experiments and three supplemental ones (N = 14,744) support the predicted effects on impression formation as well as the proposed mechanism. For example, participants who listened to (vs. read) a mixed-valence news story on the risks and benefits of a product processed its negative details more selectively, and in turn formed more pessimistic impressions of its safety. Moderators are also explored, showing that negativity biases similar to those observed for listeners arose among readers when their control over information flow was restricted, and that a positivity bias arose among listeners when the positive (vs. negative) information in a story was more surprising. Theoretical contributions to previous research on reading versus listening comprehension are discussed, as are the substantive implications for media firms and consumers.