Effects of Interactive 1 Effects of Interactive Versus Non-Interactive Communication A Senior Honors Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for graduation with distinction in Communication in the undergraduate colleges

Companies and organizations frequently send communications in both electronic and hard copy format. This duplication would be unnecessary if one method was shown to be superior to the other. This thesis displays strong benefits for using interactive electronic communication rather than non-interactive forms, including hard copy and static correspondence. Participants viewed eight advertisements (two noninteractive advertisements that were measured as non-arousing, two interactive advertisements that were measured as non-arousing, two non-interactive advertisements that were measured as arousing, and two interactive advertisements that were measured as arousing). Participants’ heart rate and skin conductance were measured during the experiment. They then underwent free-recall and recognition tests to measure encoding and storage of information. The results show that participants pay more attention to interactive advertisements and remember them better.