The Effect of Humorous vs Informative Social media memes from Expert vs Non-expert Sources on Emotional responses toward Mental health.
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2025-07-09
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en
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This study examined how social media memes influence emotional responses to mental health content, specifically in the context of anxiety. It focused on two key features of memes: meme type (humorous vs informative) and source credibility (expert vs non-expert). An online experiment using a 2×2 between-subjects design was conducted with 124 participants. Each participant was randomly assigned to view one of four meme conditions (humorous – expert, humorous – non-expert, informative – expert, informative – non-expert), after which they completed a survey measuring eight emotional responses (amusement, joy, relief, reassurance, anxiety, stress, doubt, frustration). The results from eight two-way ANOVAs revealed a significant main effect was found for source credibility on doubt, with non-expert memes eliciting more doubt than expert memes. Additionally, a significant interaction effect between meme type and source credibility was found for frustration, showing that frustration levels were higher for informative memes from non-expert sources compared to informative memes from expert sources. The study’s findings suggest that source credibility seems to matter more to people when memes are informative rather than humorous.
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