Comparing the Effects of Vivid Writing and Photographs on Moral Judgment in Public Relations

Abstract

This experiment explores whether vivid writing can improve ethical reasoning by testing it in public relations against non-vivid writing, alone and in combination with pictures. Vivid writing has effects similar to photographs on attention, memory, emotion, and persuasion; this study explores whether vivid writing effects includes one of the more important effects that photographs can have—improving ethical reasoning. Results show non-vivid writing alone raised participants’ moral judgment, however photographs increased participants’ perceptions of the issues as morally important. Vivid writing did increase participants’ empathy, and empathy was related to support for the organization. Photographs increased participants’ perception of the issue as morally important.

Keywords

moral development ethics public relations vivid writing photographs

It may be a cliché, but the well-worn phrase that a picture tells a story as well as large amounts of text does have some evidence to back it up. Images have been found to be especially good at many things, including attracting attention (Bohle & Garcia, 1987), increasing recall (David & Kang, 1998; Gibson & Zillmann, 2000; Grimes & Drechsel, 1996; Paivio & Csapo, 1973), affecting us emotionally (Gibson & Zillmann, 2000; Zillmann, Knobloch, & Yu, 2001), and improving moral judgment, that is, the quality of the reasoning people use when thinking about right and wrong (Coleman, 2006). But is the reverse also true? If pictures are good at all these things, will a thousand vivid, descriptive words that help people paint a mental picture, do the same?

Vivid writing—which is concrete, descriptive writing that emphasizes human qualities—is comparable with photographs in that it helps people paint a picture in their minds (Cupchik, Leonard, Axelrad, & Kalin, 1998; Kurby, Britt, & Magliano, 2005). Also called high-imagery language (David & Kang, 1998), this type of writing has been shown to be good at significantly improving recall, attracting attention, improving memory, creating emotion, and persuading (David & Kang, 1998; Keller & Block, 1997; Nisbett & Ross, 1980). Vivid writing has been shown to be weighted more heavily by readers when making moral judgments than non-vivid writing (Taylor & Thompson, 1982), has been linked to moral imagination, which is necessary for moral judgment (Moberg & Seabright, 2000; Pardales, 2002), and facilitates decisions emphasizing that the ends do not justify the means (Amit & Greene, 2012). In addition to much empirical evidence, there are many theoretical linkages to suggest a relationship between vivid writing and moral judgment; however, no research has yet determined if there is a cause-and-effect relationship. The theoretical basis for proposing that vivid writing may improve moral judgment is rooted in the elaboration likelihood model (ELM; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) and dual-coding theory (Paivio, 1990), which have been adapted and expanded specifically to explain moral judgment (Amit & Greene, 2012).

This study is important because encouraging better ethical thinking could lead to better deliberation by the public on issues of importance to non-profits and social movement organizations that promote worthy causes. These communicators have been called “moral visionaries,” promoting the greater good instead of their own self-interests (Freeman, 2009, p. 269). The use of graphic photographs and “image events” (DeLuca, 1999, p. 2) is now standard practice, as well as a communicative necessity, especially for activist groups (Gronbeck, 1995; Jamieson, 1988) because photographs are effective at attracting attention and raising awareness. But photographs also can result in an unexpected backlash of negative reactions, boycotts, and even legal challenges, as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) discovered with the “Holocaust on your Plate” campaign that featured stomach-churning images equating Jews’ and animals’ experiences, and Operation Rescue found with its anti-abortion campaign showing images of aborted fetuses (Freeman, 2009). While discussion about the acceptability of graphic imagery should continue, in cases like these where images may provoke outrage against the organization, one alternative is for communicators to use a strategy of vivid writing that paints a mental picture. If vivid writing accomplishes the same goals pictures have been used for, such as attracting attention, improving recall, creating emotion, and, as this study examines, improving moral judgment, while avoiding the pitfalls, then professionals should know this. Helping non-profit communicators understand when to use words versus images will help them make better decisions and design more effective campaigns. Attempting to raise the bar with photographs that have been shown to improve moral judgment—those that are unexpected and novel—may advance the greater good; however, some images can backfire, and sometimes, no images are available. The question then becomes when it is not possible or prudent to include photographs in public relations communications, or to include the novel pictures that have been shown to improve moral judgment (Coleman, 2006), would a different kind of writing do just as well? This study tests vivid writing in the public relations domain against non-vivid writing, alone and in combination with pictures, to see which, if any, has a greater ability to improve ethical reasoning. Other important outcomes including empathy, moral importance of the issue, and intention to support the organization are also studied.

Literature Review

The Vividness Effect

Schools of public relations and mass communication teach students to write in a style largely devoid of description for reasons of objectivity to economy of resources (Schudson, 2001). Yet, vivid writing is recommended (Larocque, 2008; Smith, 2003; Zappala & Carden, 2009) to attract attention, engage readers, and help them develop a mental picture of the story. “Vivid” is information that it is “likely to attract and hold our attention and to excite the imagination” (Nisbett & Ross, 1980, p. 45). Vivid writing is emotionally interesting, concrete, imagery provoking, sensory, temporal, or spatial (Nisbett & Ross, 1980). We know from empirical evidence that it causes people to create mental images (Taylor & Thompson, 1982), increases recall (David & Kang, 1998) and emotional impact (Nisbett & Ross, 1980), including empathy (Jajdelska, Butler, Kelly, McNeill, & Overy, 2010). Vivid information also demands less from the reader (Keller & Block, 1997) and is more easily retrieved (Taylor & Thompson, 1982). It makes it easier for the perceiver to form an image of the information, leaving a greater memory trace and giving it more impact when judgments are made (Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Reyes, Thompson, & Bower, 1980). The detailed verbal description in vivid writing is also more persuasive (Keller & Block, 1997)—something that public relations aspires to. Researchers in education, advertising, and social psychology extoll the benefits of vivid writing, that is, words that help people paint a picture in their minds (Cupchik et al., 1998; Kurby et al., 2005) and use it to improve moral judgment (Narvaez & Gleason, 2007). However, all studies do not universally find these effects. A review of research on the vividness effect concludes the effect is not only moderate to weak but also implicates flawed methods (Taylor & Thompson, 1982). The authors note that vivid information performs better when attention is low or there are distractions, such as those found in the real-world versus laboratory conditions.

Processing Theories

Explanations for why and how vivid writing is related to moral judgment are found in the dual processing theories, including the ELM (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) and dual-coding theory (DCT; Paivio, 1990). Generally, reasoning about moral matters is based on the same processes as reasoning about other types of content (Gubbins & Byrne, 2014), however, there are some differences, so a dual-process model of moral judgment has recently been proposed that adapts these theories specifically to the processing of moral issues (Amit & Greene, 2012). Briefly,¹ the ELM specifies two separate systems—one for fast, intuitive, automatic processing called the peripheral route, which includes the processing of emotions, and a second, slower, more thoughtful, controlled, and rational processing system called the central route (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). DCT also specifies two separate, specialized systems but says one is for processing language and the other for visual and non-verbal information (Paivio, 1986). DCT posits that information coded in both systems has many advantages, including being remembered better. This implicates vivid writing because messages that use strong imagery to create mental images enable the brain to assimilate and process information more effectively than non-vivid messages by way of using both verbal and non-verbal systems and through an interaction between peripheral and central route processing (Sheppard, 2005), prompting greater elaboration (Keller & Block, 1997). Thus, if vivid writing makes emotional reactions more intense because it creates an image in the mind’s eye, and if emotional reactions intensify moral judgment, as well as encourage central route processing, then learning about a moral situation through vivid writing could improve moral judgment. Two studies that used outcomes related to moral judgment confirm this; in one, vivid messages increased prosocial behavior (J. O. Bailey et al., 2015), and in another, vividness led to less delinquent behavior (van Gelder, Hershfield, & Nordgren, 2013).

The hallmark of the dual-process model of moral judgment is the integrated functioning of the affective system, with its automatic and rapid responses to emotions, and the deliberately controlled and slow efforts of the cognitive system (Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004; Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Kahneman & Fredrick, 2002). Evidence supports this theory, and adds the distinction that automatic, emotional responses promote judgments that favor rights of individuals, whereas controlled cognition promotes utilitarian judgments that favor the greater good (Amit & Greene, 2012). Other theoretical additions include the idea that emotions and reasoning both matter, but emotional processing tends to dominate (Greene & Haidt, 2002). Thus, according to theory and evidence, the causal mechanisms that link vivid writing to moral judgment are emotion (Rodero, 2012), attention, and memory (Moore, Clark, & Kane, 2008), as well as the combination of central and peripheral processing (Greene & Haidt, 2002).

Effects of Photographs

While this study is mainly interested in writing style, it also tests photographs and compares them with vivid writing. Studies have shown the superiority of pictures (Gibson & Zillmann, 2000; Grimes & Drechsel, 1996; Paivio & Csapo, 1973), repeatedly finding that images are more memorable and emotional than the written word. Some scholars have challenged conventional wisdom ascribing power to images (Barnhurst, 1994; Perlmutter, 1998), and claims about the power of a photo are more common than evidence (Domke, Perlmutter, & Spratt, 2002). Perlmutter (2005) argued that the idea that a single photograph or even a series of images can alter public opinion is overly simplistic. More likely, images interact with words and our preexisting understandings of the world, that is, our schemas (G. A. Bailey & Lichty, 1972; Bennett, Swenson, & Wilkinson, 1992; Domke et al., 2002).

We agree that images interact with text and individuals’ existing understandings of the world to shape information processing and judgments. Thus, it is important to examine writing style as it interacts with photographs. Theoretically, an interaction of photographs and text is predicted by DCT, which states that when activation from the visual and verbal subsystems is pooled, the additive effect produces better outcomes than when only one system is used (Paivio, 1979). But the interaction between photographs and text is complex; pictures and text together could improve processing or degrade it by pictures distracting from the information in text (David & Kang, 1998).

Photographs and moral judgment

Although evidence of photographs’ ability to alter public opinion or policy support may be lacking, we do have evidence that photographs can improve moral judgment. In experiments, photographs significantly improved journalists’ ethical reasoning over text alone (Coleman, 2006). When race was incorporated, photographs elevated moral judgment regardless of the race of the people in the pictures (Coleman, 2011a). Still photographs were significantly better at improving moral judgment than video (Meader, Knight, Coleman, & Wilkins, 2015).² The causal mechanisms through which photographs affected moral judgment in these studies include central route processing, involvement or attention (Coleman, 2006), and the emotion of empathy (Coleman, 2011b), as predicted by dual processing theories. One study so far (Coleman, 2011a) has failed to show improvements in moral judgment when subjects see photographs (Coleman, 2011b). None of these studies used vivid writing. This study builds on this line of work by exploring how vivid writing compares with photographs, given the evidence above on vivid writing’s effects on memory, attention, emotion, empathy, and the weighting of moral judgments, as well as theory that predicts vivid writing could improve moral judgment.

Moral Development Theory

The theory that best addresses the question of what improves moral judgment is moral development theory (Kohlberg, 1981, 1984; Rest, 1994, Rest, Bebeau, & Thoma, 1999). Moral judgment is the component of this theory that involves the decision-making process, studying the things that are important to people when making an ethical judgment. It has been called “a more sophisticated theoretical basis for the ethical practice of public relations,” helping to explain the complex processes by which people reason through moral decisions (Cabot, 2005, p. 321). Moral judgment describes how people decide that a course of action is ethically right or wrong (Rest et al., 1999) using schema theory as the underlying framework. It posits that people use moral schemas they have previously developed to understand and process information arising from new ethical dilemmas (Kohlberg, 1981, 1984; Rest et al., 1999). If a person has acquired a schema for the highest level of moral reasoning, the statements representing those stages will activate it, and the person will consider it to be important in a decision. Otherwise, lower level schemas are activated.

When people face an ethical quandary, they rely on things that are important to them to make a decision about the “right” thing to do. Some of these reasons are better than others. In moral development theory, the better, or higher quality reasons for choosing a course of action represent more complex, comprehensive, and elaborate ideas and take more things into account at one time (Kohlberg, 1981, 1984; Piaget, 1965; Rest et al., 1999). The ideas in each level represent progression from simple to complex. The theory’s three levels of reasoning quality are derived from a multitude of classical ethical philosophies, including those of John Rawls, Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, and the utilitarians. In these ethical philosophies, reasons that privilege one’s self-interests are of lower quality than reasons that privilege the good of all society.

The three levels in moral development theory proceed as follows (Kohlberg, 1981, 1984; Rest et al., 1999): The lowest level, termed personal interest schema, describes someone who is concerned with his or her own welfare; behavior that benefits one’s self is right. Others are considered, but only when their needs are the same as one’s own. For example, deciding to use a controversial photograph in an organization’s publication because it might win an award would be an example of this level of reasoning.

The middle level, named the maintaining norms schema, is defined by conforming to society’s expectations, such as helping others and gaining approval to maintain the social contract. In the above example, someone who decides to run a photograph based on advice from the legal department is reasoning at this level. Here, doing the right thing is equated with following laws and rules, without thought to whether they are just.

The highest level of moral judgment, the postconventional schema, is defined by giving each person a stake in the system and being committed to universal ethical principles that are the result of intellectual reasoning. At this level, laws and rules are respected if they achieve full reciprocity—that is, they should not favor one group over another. Right and wrong and the value of rules and law are determined by their appeal to mutuality. They should also be universal, that is, the same thing should be done in all similar circumstances. An example of this is someone who approves of publishing a photograph that could be harmful to some because it might help prevent social problems from occurring in the future.

Using this theory, researchers can gauge which level of moral judgment people are using. If people are indeed reasoning at higher levels after reading vivid stories, use of this theory will allow its detection. Research also has shown that certain mechanisms and conditions can provide a “bump” in the level of moral judgment used; photographs have been shown to have that ability in previous studies, however, this is not the equivalent of imagining a visual image via vivid writing. That will be addressed here. Using moral development theory and findings on the vividness effect as a basis, we hypothesize a main effect of vivid writing on moral judgment, and ask if there is an interaction effect of vivid writing and photographs.

H1: Participants who read vividly written stories will show significantly higher levels of moral judgment than those who read non-vivid stories.

RQ1: Is there an interaction between vivid writing and photographs that significantly affects moral judgment?

While the main question in this study is whether vivid writing has a cause-and-effect relationship on moral judgment, other processes and mechanisms also may be involved, and those will be reviewed next. For example, it is well documented that individual factors including age, education, and religiosity are related to moral development (Rest et al., 1999). These will be used in this study as controls. Empathy also has been shown to affect moral judgment (Hoffman, 2000, 1997), but it has not been studied when conveyed through vivid writing, so that will be tested here. In addition, moral intensity is a concept that describes the degree of moral import ascribed to specific situations (Jones, 1991); we test whether vivid stories are more morally intense, and use it here as a control variable to allow us to look at the pure effects of vivid writing on moral judgment.

Empathy

Psychologists agree that the affective system, or emotions, influences moral cognition (Damasio, 1994; Haidt, 2001, 2003; Pizarro, 2000) and the use of both affective and cognitive systems is more likely to lead to sound moral judgments (Pardales, 2002). One specific type of emotion that has repeatedly been shown to be a causal agent in improving moral judgment is empathy (Hoffman, 1997, 2000). Empathy is the ability to feel for another person in that situation and involves an emotional response that matches someone else’s emotions (Wispe, 1986). More than just recognition of an emotion in another person, empathy is the ability to actually feel what another person is feeling (Hoffman, 2000, 1997). This occurs by imagining one’s self in the same situation (Gordon, 1986; Siemer & Reisenzein, 2007).

Empathy can be triggered by visual or verbal cues (Fiske, 1982; Hoffman, 2000; Siemer & Reisenzein, 2007). Reading about a situation activates the same part of the brain as actually witnessing that same situation in real life (Mar & Oatley, 2008). Empathy is more likely to occur from verbal information when it is vividly imagined (Keltner, Ellsworth, & Edwards, 1993; Strack, Schwarz, & Gschneidinger, 1985). The semantic processing associated with translating words into meaning, as well as the encoding and decoding processes, mediate between the feelings of the victim and affective responses of the receiver (Hoffman, 1984). Responses can take any of three forms: people may focus on another person’s feelings, imagine themselves in the same situation, or a combination of both. Each of these responses could help create a vivid mental image that can increase empathy (Hoffman, 1984). Thus, the following hypothesis is posed:

H2: Vivid writing will be significantly correlated with higher levels of empathy than non-vivid writing.

Moral Intensity

Moral development is a theory of individual ethical decision making and does not address the characteristics of the ethical issue itself. Jones (1991) proposed a new variable called “moral intensity,” which acknowledges that some moral issues are more important, or intense, than others, and that certain characteristics of the issue itself will affect decision making. For example, most people would consider stealing pencils from the office less morally intense than embezzling thousands of dollars. Jones posits six characteristics that influence moral intensity: “magnitude of consequences,” the sum of the harms or benefits done to people; “social consensus,” the degree to which others agree with a decision; “probability of effect,” the likelihood that something will actually take place and cause harm; “temporal immediacy,” the length of time before consequences occur; “proximity,” the social, physical, psychological, or cultural closeness one has to those who would be affected; and “concentration of effect,” the number of people affected, for example, if a few people are cheated out of money, that has a greater concentration of effect than if many are. The construct of moral intensity is included in this study because it is linked to vividness. Moral issues of high intensity will be more vivid than those of low intensity because their effects are emotionally interesting, more concrete, or more proximate or temporally immediate (Jones, 1991). Moral intensity also is included in this study because of the important effect it has on moral judgment (Barnett, 2001; Yang & Wu, 2009). No research has yet looked at whether photographs or the way a story is written increases moral intensity:

RQ2: Will readers perceive that stories written vividly or non-vividly are more morally intense?

RQ3: Will photographs accompanying stories cause readers to feel the stories are more morally intense than stories without a photograph?

Intention to Support

An important outcome of non-profit organizations’ public relations efforts is support via donating or volunteering. A positive image engendered more support than a negative image in a study where people responded more favorably to pictures of poor, healthy-looking people than pictures of poor, hungry-looking people (Dyck & Coldevin, 1992). However, it also has been found that the most effective fundraising communication uses messages focused on others and draws attention to negative instead of positive emotions (Fisher, Vandenbosch, & Antia, 2008).

In addition, some of the main motivators of supporting organizations are perspective taking and empathic concern (Takada & Levine, 2007). Public relations is often concerned with gaining support for a cause or product from the audience, but there is little evidence to guide predictions, so this study asks the following research question:

RQ4: What affects audiences’ intention to support a non-profit organization?

Method

This study used an experiment to investigate a cause-and-effect relationship of vivid writing and photographs on moral judgment using a between-subjects, 2 × 2 factorial design. The first factor is Writing Style (vivid/non-vivid); the second is Photographs (with photograph/without photograph). Three social issue stories that might be included in a non-profit organization’s newsletter represented the repetition factor. The stories were about elder abuse, drug abuse, and homelessness. Participants read all three stories in one of the following conditions: vivid writing without a photograph; vivid writing with a photograph; non-vivid writing without a photograph; and non-vivid writing with a photograph. Participants were randomly assigned to condition, and the stories were rotated using a Latin squares design to avoid order effects.

Participants

One hundred fifty-eight participants, 90% adults and 10% students, were recruited with incentives of US$10 coffee shop gift cards. Participants ranged in age from 19 to 86, with 38.61 being the mean age; 64.3% were women, 35.7% were male.³ Racially, 69.8% were White, 7% Black, 8.5% Asian, 7% Hispanic, and 7.5% were listed Other.

Materials and Procedure

Stimulus stories

Three stories of approximately 450 words each were presented as a story for a non-profit organization’s newsletter. Participants were asked to decide if it should run or not and then answer questions about the reasons for their decisions.

Stories were written according to conceptual definitions of vivid writing from the literature. Vivid stories used concrete language versus abstract language in the non-vivid stories, contained description of people and places, and emphasized feelings and emotions. People told stories in their own words through direct quotations; the non-vivid versions summarized and paraphrased, or quoted officials and experts (Cupchik et al., 1998; Keller & Block, 1997; Kurby et al., 2005).

An example of how vivid writing was operationalized is found in the first paragraph of the elder abuse story: “Dennis Franklin’s face is sunken and hollow, the skin pulled tight against his bones.” The non-vivid version began: “As the older population swells, abuse of the elderly is an increasing concern, and one that cuts across racial, class, gender and geographic lines.” Both vivid and non-vivid stories contained the same information about the issue, people, and programs to alleviate the problem. Non-vivid stories used statistics and base-rate information rather than vivid description. Story length, amount of information, and basic content was the same in both vivid and non-vivid versions, thus controlling for everything except the manipulated variable of vividness. A manipulation check confirmed equivalence (reported below).

Stimulus photos

In the conditions with photographs, actual photographs taken by professional photographers that won prestigious national awards were used so the photographs would be realistic, novel, and unexpected—the kind of pictures shown to increase empathy (Mendelson, 2001) and ethical reasoning (Coleman, 2006). The drug use photograph showed a girl, 6, and her brother, 3, pretending to inject intravenous (IV) drugs. The girl has rubber tubing wrapped around her arm and is pointing an empty hypodermic syringe at her forearm. The homeless photograph shows a girl, 10, barefoot and crouched on the floor against a dirty wall, tipping a cereal bowl up to her face to drain the last drop of milk. The elder photograph shows a man in his 70s in a bed, covered with a sheet with his mouth open in an O-shape.

Manipulation Checks

To ensure that it was the vividness, not the amount of information, that caused any effects, an apriori manipulation check was performed on 26 participants. Four factual questions were asked about each story with true/false or multiple choice responses (e.g., “Elder abuse is usually committed by: Someone who takes care of them/Someone they don’t know”). Means were not significantly different for participants in the vivid and non-vivid conditions in the amount of information learned, t(24) = −0.431, p = .670, d = .166, (vivid M = 11.14, SD = 1.40; non-vivid M = 10.92, SD = 1.24), indicating that both versions contained similar information.

A manipulation check within the study itself was conducted to ensure that participants found the vividly written stories more vivid than the non-vividly written stories. An index of three items measured vividness, scored on a 7-point scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree: “This story had a lot of details,” “I formed a mental image from this story,” and “It was easy to imagine what this scene looked like,” (Cupchik et al., 1998; Kurby et al., 2005; homeless α = .96, elder α = .98, junkie α = .90). Vividly written stories were significantly more vivid than non-vivid stories (F = 10.85, df = 1, 157, p < .01, η² = .066; vivid M = 51.58, SD = 8.94; non-vivid M = 46.59, SD = 10.45).

In addition, moral judgment scores (operationalization described below) for all three stories were equivalent, indicating that any differences in moral judgment were not due to the stories. Means were not significantly different between the scores for junkie and homeless stories, t(157) = −0.093, p = .926, d = .008, for the junkie and elder stories, t(157) = −1.422, p = .157, d = .124, or for the homeless and elder stories, t(157) = −1.35, p = .180, d = .116 (junkie M = 5.23, SD = 2.46; homeless M = 5.25, SD = 2.44; elder M = 5.54, SD = 2.55).

Instrument

Moral judgment, the main dependent variable, was measured with a procedure used for 30 years in hundreds of studies developed and validated by the creators of the Defining Issues Test (DIT; Rest et al., 1999). Using a 5-point scale (great, much, some, little, no importance), participants rated 12 statements according to how important each was in making their decision. Statements were validated as reflecting functioning at one of the three levels of moral development theory. For example, a postconventional schema (highest level) statement was, “Stories that are painful to some have to be told so others will benefit.” A maintaining norms schema (middle level) statement was, “Whether the public has a right to know all the facts about this issue and its effects on people”; a personal interest schema (lowest level) statement was “Using this story in the newsletter would help the organization’s reputation.” Some statements were the same as those used in the DIT; others were created by the researchers or adapted from the DIT to reflect the public relations domain. To ensure that the statements represented the ethical level they were meant to reflect, they were tested against original DIT statements at the same level. Significant correlations with at least four other statements at the level they were meant to represent were required of each statement; none correlated with any statements at other levels.

A meaningless statement⁴ from the DIT was used with each story to help identify participants who are trying to “fake” a high ethical score by selecting statements that sound important but have no meaning; those who selected meaningless statements were purged.

After ranking each of the 12 statements, participants narrowed them down to their four most important statements. The moral judgment score was calculated from this.

Postconventional statements ranked as the most important reason scored 4 points; those ranked second scored 3 points; third scored 2 points, and fourth scored 1 point. Personal interest and maintaining norms statements scored zero. Scores for each story were summed for a range of zero to 10 per story and then summed across stories for an overall moral judgment score ranging from zero to 30 for all three stories combined (Rest & Narvaez, 1984).

Empathy was measured with four questions on a scale from none at all (1) to a great deal (7): “How much sympathy did you feel for the people in this dilemma?” “How much did you imagine yourself in the place of the people in this dilemma?” “How much compassion did you feel for the people in this dilemma?” and “How much did you feel what the people in this dilemma were feeling?” (Batson, 1987; Hoffman, 1997, 2000; Johnson, Olivo, Gibson, Reed, & Ashburn-Nardo, 2009; junkie α = .76, homeless α = .84, elder α = .83).

Moral intensity was measured with an index of five questions (strongly agree = 7 to strongly disagree = 1: “My decision will harm few people if any,” “My decision will not cause harm in the immediate future,” “There is a very small likelihood that my decision will actually cause any harm,” “Most people would agree that my decision is right or ethical,” “The overall harm—if any—done as a result of my action would be very small”; Jones, 1991; drug use α = .828, homeless α = .864, elder α = .800.).

Intention to support was measured with an index of two questions per story, (1-7) of how likely participants would be to donate to and volunteer for the organizations (drug use α = .860, homeless α = .860, elder α = .807).

Control demographics included age, education, and religion questions from the General Social Survey: “How would you describe yourself on this scale? extremely non-religious (1) to extremely religious (7); and “Where would you place your religious beliefs on this scale?” liberal (1) to fundamentalist (7).

Results

A total of 158 from an initial 199 subjects participated in the study; 41 were purged for selecting meaningless statements as their most important reasons. Of those, 36 read vivid stories with photos, 41 read non-vivid stories with photos, 42 read vivid stories with no photos, and 39 read non-vivid stories with no photos.

H1, that participants who read vivid stories will show higher moral judgment than those who do not, controlling for age, education, religion, and empathy, was not supported with ANCOVA, F(1, 149) = 2.16, p = .144, η² = .014. Vivid writing did not significantly improve moral judgment.

For RQ1, there was a significant interaction between writing and photos that affects moral judgment, F(1, 149) = 4.863, p < .05, η² = .032. Participants who read non-vivid writing showed significantly higher levels of moral judgment when photos were not presented than when they were (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Means and Standard Deviations of Vivid and Non-Vivid Writing With and Without Photographs.

	Photographs	No photographs
Vivid writing	15.97 (6.62)	15.167 (5.20)
Non-vivid writing	15.41 (5.31)*	17.64 (5.95)*

p < .05.

H2—that vivid writing will be significantly correlated with higher levels of empathy than non-vivid writing—was supported. Using a point biserial partial correlation, controlling for age, education, and religion, vivid writing and empathy were significantly correlated (r = .192, p < .05).

RQ2 showed vivid writing did not affect moral intensity, F(1, 154) = 1.03, p = .311, η² = .077. The mean moral intensity score for vivid writing was 75.24 (SD = 13.81), for non-vivid writing was 73.28 (SD = 14.73).

Significant differences were found when testing RQ3, which looked for differences in moral intensity caused by photos, F(1, 154) = 5.07, p < .05, η² = .032 (photos M = 76.77, SD = 14.15; no photo M = 71.85, SD = 14.06). The inclusion of a photograph increased participants’ perceptions of moral intensity. No significant differences in moral intensity among the three stories were found, F(2, 196) = 0.462, p = .631, η² = .005; homeless M = 75.52, SD = 13.84; elder M = 73.07, SD = 16.43; junkie M = 74.62, SD = 14.58), which rules out the possibility that the effects were driven by the stories.

RQ4, what affects intention to support a non-profit organization, used ANCOVA, controlling for age, education, religion, and empathy. Neither writing style nor photographs had a significant effect on intention to support: writing, F(1, 149) = 3.18, p = .076, η² = .021; photographs, F(1, 149) = 0.327, p = .568, η² = .002.). The empathy covariate was highly significant, F(1, 149) = 54.45, p < .001, η² = .268), as was expected.

Discussion

This study found that vivid writing—either alone or in combination with photographs—did not improve moral judgment, as literature and theory suggested it would. Vivid writing has the ability to attract attention, engage readers, increase recall and emotional impact, and be more persuasive (Keller & Block, 1997; Larocque, 2008; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Taylor & Thompson, 1982). It also helps people paint a picture in their minds (Cupchik et al., 1998; Keller & Block, 1997; Kurby et al., 2005; Taylor & Thompson, 1982). But it did not improve the way people in this study thought about right and wrong. Instead, non-vivid writing without a photograph was significantly better at raising these participants’ level of moral judgment.

Nor did including a picture elevate moral judgment, the way it has in other studies (Coleman, 2003, 2006, 2011a; Meader et al., 2015). We can only speculate on the reasons for these findings. One possible explanation could be that the pictures were negative. Previous research on visuals in public relations has shown that images that evoke negative emotions can decrease the number of donations and their dollar amount (Dyck & Coldevin, 1992). Although negative information is key to getting people to think deeply about an issue, and can lead to improved judgment on some issues such as politics (Marcus, Neuman, & MacKuen, 2000), that does not necessarily apply to all domains. Public relations may be one exception. As a form of persuasive communication, it may produce different responses in audiences. Ensuring audiences have a positive experience becomes paramount to successful public relations efforts, and eliciting positive attitudes is an effective means of garnering support for an organization or cause (Ki & Childers Hon, 2007). Furthermore, including too many visuals can risk creating a negative reaction in audiences, thus deterring them from supporting a cause (Sadler-Trainor, 2005). When visuals were negative, they elicited unpleasant emotions; not having a photo prompted more people to donate to the organization (Dyck & Coldevin, 1992). Perhaps our participants were reacting similarly to a negative story and photo, and a positive one would produce different results. In addition, the studies that showed these photos improved moral judgment were set in a news context, where negative images are standard fare (Coleman, 2006, 2011a; Meader et al., 2015); public relations audiences may have been expecting something different.

This study did find the expected correlation between vivid writing and empathy. Readers of vivid writing in this study were better able to feel what others were feeling and had compassion and sympathy for them, than were readers of non-vivid writing. Even though empathy was significant as a covariate in moral judgment, it did not function as an intervening variable between vivid writing and moral judgment in this study. Past studies using both verbal and visual cues that were vivid have triggered empathy (Fiske, 1982; Hoffman, 1997, 2000), and researchers have explained that by the processing that occurs when translating words into vivid imagery, which mediates between the person in the story and the reader (Hoffman, 1984). Our vivid stories were constructed along these same lines to activate the same processes, which was successful.

Empathy was, however, a significant predictor of support for the non-profit organization. Neither writing style nor photographs had any effect on intention to support the organization. With this result, we again expect that the negative tone of both the visual and verbal information may have played a role. In the only similar study we could find, a positive photograph led to more support than a negative one (Dyck & Coldevin, 1992). We purposely used the same photographs as in previous research showing these images improved participants’ moral judgment (Coleman, 2003, 2006, 2011a), which is one reason we speculate that photographs work differently in news than public relations on moral judgment. However, even research in the public relations domain is equivocal on the subject of negative or positive tone; another study found verbal messages that evoked negative emotions was better for fundraising than positive ones (Fisher et al., 2008). Thus, more research is needed to sort out the mechanisms and contingent conditions of negative and positive photographs in the public relations domain.

When it comes to moral intensity, which is the idea that some ethical dilemmas are more important than others, we found that, although it is a characteristic of the issue itself, this can be altered by how the issue is presented. In this study, adding photographs significantly increased participants’ perceptions of the issue as morally important. Vivid writing did not have that same effect over non-vivid writing. We can be assured that photographs caused this effect because we found no difference in perceptions of moral intensity between the issues themselves; only when a photograph was added did participants see them as more intense. Even though theorists have said that morally intense issues are more vivid (Jones, 1991), we found that it matters how that vividness is conveyed. Vividness via words did not increase the moral intensity of an issue, but vividness in photographs did.

Conclusion

The findings in this study do not support the idea that vividness conveyed through words can benefit non-profit communications by improving how people think about ethical issues. In this public relations context, conventional writing did a better job of encouraging participants to think more ethically about social issues. Nor did photographs improve participants’ moral judgment in this context; instead, it was a combination of non-vivid writing and no photographs that elevated ethical reasoning.

Improving audiences’ moral reasoning is not the only important outcome that we studied. Vivid writing did inspire empathy when compared with non-vivid writing. Encouraging empathy for a cause is a desirable goal for communicators trying to improve social problems. Another outcome important to public relations is people’s intention to support the organization, which was predicted by higher levels of empathy, although not writing style or photographs. Finally, this study showed that adding photographs can make people think that an issue has greater moral importance, which is another outcome that may be desirable in and of itself to public relations communicators.

One big take-away from this study is how the findings in the public relations domain can contradict those in related areas. This emphasizes the need for research specifically in public relations, rather than extrapolating from other areas. Incorporating photographs into public relations communication is not the same as adding them to news or political communication. While photographs grab people’s attention and make them think more rationally about politics, and can even cause journalists and news audiences to think at higher ethical levels (Coleman, 2003, 2006, 2011a; Meader et al., 2015), that is not necessarily the case for public relations materials. It may be, but we suspect this research will need to be replicated with positive images, which are more common to this genre than the negative photographs used in this study.

This research offers practical advice for professionals and also contributes to moral development theory by providing a more nuanced picture of the role of photographs and text in improving moral judgment. It shows that context matters for the effects of images; the same photograph that improves moral judgment under one situation (news; Coleman, 2003, 2006, 2011b; Meader et al., 2015) can have no effect in another (public relations). This study also showed that the presence of a photograph had the ability to enhance the perceived moral importance of the issue in these participants, something not previously examined in any other studies.

This study is also important because it continues the process of building a theoretical model for cultivating moral thinking via communications. If public relations professionals are to serve their function as moral educators (Krcmar, 2013), it is important to know what conditions and practices promote better moral judgment in audiences and publics. For example, if the goal of a public relations message is to elevate audiences’ ethical reasoning, no photographs and conventional writing in the journalistic style is more likely to achieve that. Vivid writing is recommended for the purposes of increasing audiences’ empathy for a cause. Negative pictures should be avoided, not just the graphic and shocking images of aborted fetuses and Holocaust victims but also the lesser but still negative kind used here, for example, showing homeless children or emaciated elderly people. They do nothing to improve ethical reasoning in public relations situations, unlike their effects in news contexts.

This study has its limitations. As an experiment, it was designed to detect effects rather than generalize to a larger population. The goals of generalizability are achieved through experiments being replicated in different settings, with different samples. It also raised new questions, for example, the use of photographs that were all negative helped control for confounding influences of varying tones; however, positive tone has been shown to be more effective in public relations (Dyck & Coldevin, 1992), so future studies should be done to compare positive and negative photographs.

In summary, although a picture may be worth a thousand words, the reverse is not the case when it comes to elevating moral judgment in social movement communications. Instead, objective writing, without photographs to embellish it, does a better job.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) declared receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was funded by a Legacy Scholars Grant from the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication at Penn State College of Communications.

Notes

Author Biographies

Rebecca S. McEntee teaches photojournalism and journalism at South Dakota State University. Before returning to The University of Texas for a PhD, Rebecca was a photo editor for 6 years and staff photographer for 14 years at the Austin American-Statesman, in Austin, Texas. Her earlier career included photography, videography, writing, editing, and television news reporting with a variety of media as well as state organizations such as the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Department of Health. Her research often focuses on visuals, with an emphasis on the editing of war imagery.

Renita Coleman has a PhD from the University of Missouri. Her research focuses on ethics, framing, and agenda setting with a special focus on visual communication. She has studied the effects of photographs on ethical reasoning, and the moral development of journalists and public relations practitioners, among other topics. She has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles in top academic journals and co-authored two books, Image and Emotion in Voter Decisions: The Affect Agenda, in 2015, and The Moral Media: How Journalists Reason About Ethics in 2005. She teaches at The University of Texas in Austin.

Carolyn Yaschur is an assistant professor at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. She teaches multimedia journalism and is a co-adviser of the student newspaper, Augustana Observer. She received her PhD in journalism from the University of Texas and her master’s degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Prior to completing her doctorate, she was an award-winning photojournalist at the Kitsap Sun (Bremerton, WA) and The State (Columbia, SC) and freelanced for the Asbury Park Press (Neptune, NJ) and Louisville Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY). Stemming from her photojournalism experience, her research revolves around visual and multimedia journalism.

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