Affective and rhetorical framing in expert communication: exploratory EEG evidence from inflation-related messages
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51480/compress.2025.8-2.950Keywords:
komunikacja ekspercka, ramowanie emocjonalne, EEG, reaktywność psychologiczna, zgodność ideologiczna, komunikacja medialnaAbstract
This two-stage exploratory EEG study examined whether neutral and affective/rhetorical expert messages concerning inflation are associated with different patterns of spectral EEG activity. The project involved sixteen adults in two consecutive stages. Stage 1 served as a feasibility pilot assessing recruitment, stimulus presentation, participant tolerance, comprehension checks and the practicability of EEG recording during exposure to expert communication. Stage 2 provided the basis for the descriptive spectral analysis and included six documented participant-level spectra per condition. The comparison was based on Grand Average spectral exports for the neutral and affective/rhetorical conditions and was interpreted as an exploratory condition-level contrast rather than a confirmatory trial-level analysis.
The affective/rhetorical condition showed higher spectral indices than the neutral condition, particularly in delta and theta ranges over selected frontal, temporal and parietal sites. These findings are interpreted as preliminary indicators of increased cognitive-affective engagement during reception of rhetorically salient expert communication. They do not provide direct evidence of psychological reactance, cognitive defence or motivated reasoning. Instead, the study identifies a feasible methodological direction for future research combining EEG with behavioural and self-report measures of message reception. The results should therefore be treated as hypothesis-generating evidence on the neurocognitive processing of affectively and rhetorically framed expert communication.
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