PhD defences in the social sciences - 2025
Mateo Seré - Essays on Well-Being Comparisons, Gender Dynamics, and Economic Resilience - 13/01/2025
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Seppe Hermans - BUILDING MINDS BY SOLVING PROBLEMS Exploring Computational Thinking and STEM Integration in Vocational Education - 6/2/2025
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Els Tanghe - Learn to lead - together! The effectivity of professional development trajectories for school leaders: opportunities and challenges for sustainable professional development and school development - 13/2/2025
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Bingrui Li - Visual Persuasion in Non-profit Advertising: Investigating the Roles of Emotional Arousal, Empathy and Credibility for Intentions to Donate - 20/02/2025
Visual Persuasion in Non-profit Advertising: Investigating the Roles of Emotional Arousal, Empathy and Credibility for Intentions to Donate
For non-profit advertisers choosing the most persuasive image is an essential strategic decision to attract attention and donors. The effectiveness of a donation advertisement depends on the persuasiveness of the visual or visual persuasion. This doctoral dissertation focuses on investigating visual persuasion and its effects on intention to donate or prosocial behavior in non-profit advertising.
Study 1 (re)introduces the concept of visual persuasion by providing an overview of past publications and proposing a concept explication for its use in the context of donor advertising. The central idea is that visual persuasion in donor advertising is conceptually divided into different levels: emotional arousal, empathy and credibility. This new concept explication is expected to enhance the understanding of visual persuasion in donor advertising by providing ways to approach and measure it, both by researchers and non-profit advertisers.
Study 2 reveals a robust negative linear relationship between valence and arousal in non-profit ad images at an aggregate level and individual level, which is different from commercial ad images. Furthermore, the findings shed light on the highly significant negative correlations between valence and intention to donate, and the highly significant positive correlations between arousal and intention to donate based on the valence classification of stimuli. Lastly, it has been found that arousal would play a mediating role in the relation between valence and intention to donate under three special conditions (targeting the female group at an aggregate level; selecting positively valenced images at an individual level; selecting negatively valenced images at an individual level).
Study 3 tests how the valence match of images and texts in donor advertising affects prosocial behavior through the mediating role of different levels of emotional empathy (positive or negative). The results confirm the mediating role of negative empathy: Through the higher level of negative empathy, the combination of a negative emotional victim image and a negative emotional text is more effective in increasing prosocial behavior. However, the mediating role of positive empathy is not confirmed. These findings provide advice to advertisers on how to develop effective donation advertising strategies.
Study 4 explores the underlying mechanisms of awareness of falsity’s effects on intention to donate by relating it to credibility as a mediator. An empirical study contrasts three non-profit ad campaigns respectively including real images, AI-generated images without tag indications, and AI-generated images with tag indications. The findings uncover that the non-profit ad campaign including real images motivates the highest levels of intention to donate than the non-profit ad campaign including AI-generated images, with or without tag indications, explained by the highest levels of credibility. Conversely, the non-profit ad campaign including AI-generated images with tags motivates the lowest levels of intention to donate than the ad campaign including real images and that including AI-generated images without tags, explained by the lowest levels of credibility.
In summary, these studies contribute to conceptually dividing visual persuasion into three measurable and touchable dimensions (emotional arousal, empathy and credibility), and explore the roles of these three dimensions of visual persuasion underlying the effects of visual images on intention to donate or prosocial behavior in non-profit advertising.
Practical Information:
- Promovendus: Bingrui Li (Lebron)
- Promotor: Prof. dr. Karolien Poels
- Date and time: Thursday 20 February 2025, 5 p.m.
- Place of the defence: Blackboard, Virtual FSW PhD Defence Room, Public Session
- contact information: Bingrui Li (Lebron) Sint-Jacobstraat 2, 2000 Antwerpen
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Bingrui Li (Lebron) via e-mail (Bingrui.Li@uantwerpen.be).
Amber Peeters - Meat at steak. Exploring masculinity in meat consumption and reduction on personal and interpersonal levels - 26/03/2025
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Sofie Apers - (In)visible and (in)vincible? Designing theory-based, evidence-based, and strategic communication materials to increase radon protection intentions - 28/03/2025
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Haike Delafontaine - Making sense of absence, distance, and presence: The role of time and space in the meaning-giving processes underlying loneliness in old age - 2/4/2025
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Frederik Stevens - Dream and Nightmare Issues: Interest Group Influence and the Logic of Agenda-Setting - 3/4/2025
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Zeynep Zümer Batur - Adult Children’s Role in Upward Intergenerational Solidarity: Gendered Dynamics and Temporal Trends in Europe - 29/04/2025
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Rozemarijn van Dijk - From Ambition to Admission. The Recruitment of Women in Politics - 30/04/2025
On Wednesday April 30, Rozemarijn van Dijk (Department of Political Science) cordially invites you to the public defence of her doctoral thesis:
From Ambition to Admission. The Recruitment of Women in Politics.
Women are still underrepresented in politics. This dissertation tries to explain this underrepresentation by studying the selection and recruitment process within political parties in the Netherlands. The first part of the dissertation focuses on political parties and how they organize candidate selection. A content analysis of formal rules and interviews with selection committee members reveal that, while formal and informal selection criteria appear gender neutral, they often have unintended gendered consequences. For example, emphasizing political and party experience tends to favour men, who are already overrepresented in these roles. Additionally, an experiment with party members shows that although they express a preference for women candidates in top positions, their strongest preference remains for political experience, which reinforces the gendered barriers already present in the selection process.
The second part shifts the focus to aspirant politicians, examining who develops political ambition. Surveys of party members over two decades show that men and women display similar levels of ambition, but because fewer women join political parties, the candidate pool remains male-dominated. A large-scale study in Belgium and the Netherlands shows that in the general population men are generally more likely to consider party membership. The final chapter focuses on how political engagement is influenced by the political climate, particularly violence against politicians. Using an experiment, it is tested whether people change their political engagement when they learn about politicians being intimidated or experiencing violence. The results showed that this was not the case.
This dissertation concludes that political parties and their members are primarily seeking candidates with political experience. While there is nothing inherently wrong with emphasizing these skills – a political position does require specific expertise – the problem arises when political parties fail to recognize the gendered consequences of their preferences. When parties focus on candidates with established political careers or active party membership, they are more likely to select men candidates, simply because men are overrepresented in these candidate pools. The biggest challenge for political parties to achieve gender diversity thus lies in recruiting more women party members and broadening their search criteria.
Practical InformationPromovenda: Rozemarijn van Dijk
- Promotors: prof. dr. Petra Meier & prof. dr. Joop van Holsteyn
- Paranymphs: dr. Bas Redert & Joep van Lit
- Date and time: Wednesday April 30, 2025, 3.30 pm
- Location: Stadscampus, Klooster van de Grauwzusters (Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, 2000 Antwerp)
- Language: English
- The defence is followed by a reception