Use of psychophysiological measurements in communication research: teachings from two studies of corporate reputation

Abstract

In this paper we evaluate the possibilities psychophysiological study of emotions can offer to communication research, main focus being on studies of organizational reputation. We briefly discuss the study of emotion in communication sciences and then describe the experimental protocol for studying reputation and emotions with the psychophysiological methods and offer some empirical results from our first experiments. The results obtained from studies reviewed in this paper show that reputation is at least partly emotional appeal and hence can be measured on an individual level through bodily reactions. Secondly, the results show that the valence of company-related content (e.g., news) also has emotional implications and thus consequences. After presenting the studies we discuss our findings and reflect our observations during the research collaboration from two different perspectives: methodological and theoretical.

Keywords

• psychophysiology
• reputation
• emotions
• experiments
• organizational communication