Richard Huskey

University of California, Davis | UCD · Department of Communication

In this special issue devoted to speaking across communication subfields, we introduce a domain general explanatory framework that integrates biological explanation with communication science and organizes our field around a shared explanatory empirical model. Specifically, we draw on David Marr’s classical framework, which subdivides the explanati...

Existing media-selection theories predominantly consider media selection at a static moment-in-time. However, such theorizing is out-of-step with today’s media landscape, which is dominated by sequential media consumption where future media selection is dependent on previously selected media. Ignoring the dependencies among sequential media selecti...

Flow is thought to occur when both task difficulty and individual ability are high. Flow experiences are highly rewarding and are associated with well-being. Importantly, media use can be a source of flow. Communication scholars have a long history of theoretical inquiry into how flow biases media selection, how different media content results in f...

How do people choose what book to read? At times, people choose to exploit well-known options that are likely to lead to high enjoyment. However, readers must also effectively explore novel books in order to learn about less-known alternatives that might lead to high enjoyment. It is unknown precisely how and why readers make these sequential book...

Behavioral science demands skillful experimentation and high-quality data that are typically gathered in person. However, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many behavioral research laboratories to close. Thankfully, new tools for conducting online experiments allow researchers to elicit psychological responses and gather behavioral data with unprecedent...

Mood management theory (MMT) hypothesizes that people select entertainment content to maintain affective homeostasis. However, this hypothesis lacks a formal quantification of each affective attributes' separate impact on an individual's media content selection, as well as an integrated cognitive mechanism explaining media selection. Here we presen...

Media research is, in part, interested in accurately explaining and predicting people’s media selection. Explanation is an accurate description of the causal mechanisms that govern media selection whereas prediction is focused on making accurate inferences about unobserved data. However, meta-analyses demonstrate that existing media selection theor...

Every day, the world of media is at our fingertips, whether it is watching movies, listening to the radio, or browsing online media. On average, people spend over 8 h per day consuming messages from the mass media, amounting to a total lifetime dose of more than 20 years in which conceptual content stimulates our brains. Effects from this flood of...

Understanding information diffusion is vital to explaining the good, bad, and ugly impacts of social media. Two types of processes govern information diffusion: broadcasting and viral spread. Viral spreading is when a message is diffused by peer-to-peer social connections, whereas broadcasting is characterized by influences that can come from outsi...

Flow is a cognitive state that manifests when there is complete attentional absorption while performing a task. Flow occurs when certain internal as well as external conditions are present, including intense concentration, a sense of control, feedback, and a balance between the challenge of the task and the relevant skillset. Phenomenologically, fl...

Understanding information diffusion is vital to explaining the good, bad, and ugly impacts of social media. Two types of processes govern information diffusion: broadcasting and viral spread. Broadcasting is when a message from one source reaches a wide audience whereas viral spreading is characterized by information transmission from one source to...

The study of moral judgements often centres on moral dilemmas in which options consistent with deontological perspectives (that is, emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with options consistent with utilitarian judgements (that is, following the greater good based on consequences). Greene et al. (2009) showed that psychol...

Understanding is a two-way street. —Eleanor Roosevelt¹ Mrs Roosevelt’s observation pre-dates the modern study of communication. Shannon had yet to publish his “mathematical theory of communication” (1948, p. 379); it would be another seven years before the field of communication began to coalesce around his ideas (Schramm, 1955), and the first Depa...

Online contexts are becoming a widely available space to disseminate health information and target specific populations for health campaigns. Limited evidence for health message engagement in these contexts exists. This study draws on the elaboration likelihood model and construal-level theory to predict processing time and recall when individuals...

Measurement noise differs by instrument and limits the validity and reliability of findings. Researchers collecting reaction time data introduce noise in the form of response time latency from hardware and software, even when collecting data on standardized computer-based experimental equipment. Reaction time is a measure with broad application for...

Theory suggests that people are more persuaded by information presented within a narrative. We argue there is room for greater understanding about why this may be the case. Accordingly, we 1) examine whether narratives are indeed more persuasive than non-narratives and 2) evaluate two theoretical mechanisms that could be responsible for these effec...

Think gossip is just trash talk? Think again. A new study shows that gossip influences behavior, fosters cooperation, and increases group affiliation.

In the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called “replication crisis” has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low re...

Measurement noise differs by instrument and limits the validity and reliability of findings. Researchers collecting reaction time data introduce noise in the form of response time latency from hardware and software, even when collecting data on standardized computer-based experimental equipment. Reaction time is a measure with broad application for...

Prevention neuroscience investigates the brain basis of attitude and behavior change. Over the years, an increasingly structurally and functionally resolved “persuasion network” has emerged. However, current studies have only identified a small handful of neural structures that are commonly recruited during persuasive message processing, and the ex...

The Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP) aims to understand message processing dynamics. Despite 20 years of research, no meta-analysis has assessed LC4MP effects. We conducted a meta-analysis of the model to examine three theoretical research domains in the LC4MP: cognitive load, motivation, and memory. Results f...

Moral intuitions are a central motivator in human behavior. Recent work highlights the importance of moral intuitions for understanding a wide range of issues ranging from online radicalization to vaccine hesitancy. Extracting and analyzing moral content in messages, narratives, and other forms of public discourse is a critical step toward understa...

Moral intuitions are a central motivator in human behavior. Recent work highlights the importance of moral intuitions for understanding a wide range of issues ranging from online radicalization to vaccine hesitancy. Extracting and analyzing moral content in messages, narratives, and other forms of public discourse is a critical step toward understa...

The Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP) is a prominent model for investigating how human biological systems engage with and process messages. Dr. Lang’s (this volume) chapter titled “How the LC4MP became the DHCCST: An epistemological fairy tale” provides an engaging overview of the foundation and development of...

Couched within the self-effects paradigm of social media influence, this research examines how posting a health promotion message to one's social media influences one's own, versus others', later health behaviors, with emphasis on emotional intensity and message sharing directives. 382 participants viewed one of eight versions of a melanoma awarene...

Flow is characterized by a high level of intrinsic reward that results from a balance between task difficulty and individual ability. The Synchronization Theory of Flow offers an explanation for the neural basis of this process. It predicts an energetically-optimized, brain-network organization between cognitive control and reward regions when task...

In a companion piece (Fisher, Keene, Huskey, & Weber, 2018), we reviewed the foundations and current state of the Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP). In this manuscript we return to the three areas investigated in our review: cognitive load, motivation, and memory. In each domain, we: (a) outline areas in which...

In the 15 years since its inception, the Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP) has contributed to understanding regarding the dynamics of message processing in a variety of domains. In this manuscript we outline the foundations and assumptions of the LC4MP, discussing salient research from biology, cognitive psycho...

Neuroscientific investigations into communication phenomena using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are becoming increasingly popular in communication science. This presents opportunities for new discoveries, but also for the rapid spread of questionable practices. Here, we look to the future of fMRI in communication science: first, high...

Cognitive control is a framework for understanding the neuropsychological processes that underlie the successful completion of everyday tasks. Only recently has research in this area investigated motivational contributions to control allocation. An important gap in our understanding is the way in which intrinsic rewards associated with a task motiv...

An increasing number of studies has been utilizing the Moral Foundations Dictionary (MFD; Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009) to extract moral information from textual data. Yet, the MFD inherits certain limitations such as ad hoc pre-selection and overlappings of word stems that limit its validity. In this paper, we introduce a crowd-sourced approach fo...

This study investigates the dynamics of attention during continuous, naturalistic interactions in a video game. Specifically, the effect of repeated distraction on a continuous primary task is related to a functional model of network connectivity. We introduce the Non-linear Attentional Saturation Hypothesis (NASH), which predicts that effective co...

Supporting Methods. Methodological detail, including mathematical and descriptive details for measures and statistical models (PDF File).

Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) and the Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME) contend that moral judgments are built on a universal set of basic moral intuitions. A large body of research has supported many of MFT’s and the MIME’s central hypotheses. Yet, an important prerequisite of this research—the ability to extract latent moral conte...

Storytelling is a universal activity, but the way in which discourse structure is used to persuasively convey ideas and emotions may depend on cultural factors. Because first-person accounts of life experiences can have a powerful impact in how a person is perceived, the storyteller may instinctively employ specific strategies to shape the audience...

While a persuasion network has been proposed, little is known about how network connections between brain regions contribute to attitude change. Two possible mechanisms have been advanced. One hypothesis predicts that attitude change results from increased connectivity between structures implicated in affective and executive processing in response...

The study of media psychology is built on a long history of research conducted both by communication scholars and by those in related disciplines. Theories and models which are used in media psychology research are often informed by analyzing, dissembling, transporting, and reassembling concepts and understanding originally introduced in psychology...

Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection has had a profound impact on scientific disciplines interested in animal psychology and behavior. Media scholars are increasingly turning to evolutionary theory in order to better understand how the human animal processes the media and is influenced by them. This entry introduces Darwin's f...

In this paper, we introduce a novel, computational approach to the analysis of online news data using the Global Database of Events, Language and Tone (GDELT; Leetaru & Schrodt, 2013), a vast, constantly updated repository of metadata collected from tens of thousands of news sources around the world. As this database has yet been untapped by commun...

This chapter introduces communication scholars interested in conducting functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) investigations to psychophysiological interaction analyses (PPI; Friston et al., 1997), a method for assessing task-modulated brain-network connectivity. Given that fMRI is still relatively uncommon among communication researchers, t...

In this chapter, we argue that it is time to move beyond mere descriptions of flow experiences. By systematically investigating the neuropsychological processes that give rise to flow states, we can advance our understanding of how media exposure contributes to flow (specifically) and well-being (more generally). Accordingly, the bulk of this chapt...

In recent years, video game addiction has received considerable empirical attention. Unfortunately, this research is stymied by inconsistencies in both conceptual and operational definitions of video game addiction. Moreover, the use of several video game addiction scales makes it difficult to estimate the prevalence and potential effects of video...

Media neuroscience has emerged as a new area of study at the intersection of media psychology and cognitive neuroscience. In previous work, we have addressed this trend from a methodological perspective. In this paper, we outline the progression of scholarship in systematic investigations of mass communication phenomena over the past century, from...

The chapter conceptualizes the customization and creation of game content as a particularly creative dimension of video game interactivity. It describes how game customization and co-creation of video game content contribute to entertainment experiences.

Core communication research questions are increasingly being investigated using brain imaging techniques. A majority of these studies apply a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) approach. This trend raises two important questions that we address in this article. First, under what conditions can fMRI methodology increase knowledge and refin...

A substantial amount of research has focused on predicting the effectiveness of persuasive messages. However, characteristics of both the message itself and its receiver can impact theoretically predicted effects. For example, recent work published in this journal demonstrated that issue involvement modulates the relationship between message sensat...

To date, much of the literature related to video games theorizes and tests functional and motivational explanations for why people choose to play video games. An alternative perspective treats play as an evolutionary adaptation designed to motivate individuals to practice survival relevant behaviors in low-cost contexts. While both perspectives are...