Psychophysiological Differences in Fluent and Disfluent Internet Memes

Internet memes are multimedia digital artifacts that delineate joke insiders from outsiders with increasing levels of incongruity resolution. This study investigates the psychophysiological differences between internet memes processed with greater ease or difficulty, exploring the impact of processing fluency on aesthetic liking, arousal, and facial expressions. We selected 84 multimodal internet memes evenly distributed between the 75th percentile of fluency-inducing and disfluency-inducing memes from a prior research study. Participants (N=34, 53% female) rated a random selection of 10 fluent and 10 disfluent memes while we recorded electrodermal (EDA) and electromyographic (EMG) activity. The results show that fluent memes were liked more than disfluent memes and perceived as easier to process. This replicates previous findings that processing fluency impacts the appreciation of internet memes. In the EDA, we found a greater magnitude of skin conductance response (SCR) for disfluent internet memes, suggesting greater arousal during processing. Surprisingly, we found no significant differences in smiling, or zygomatic activity, and frowning, or corrugator activity. However, disfluent internet memes had a delay in emotional reactivity, with their first and maximum peak latencies happening significantly later than fluent memes. This was also evident in the first and maximum peak latency of the SCR. This highlights the temporal differences of psychophysiology for fluency and disfluency. While overall emotional processing is similar for fluent and disfluent internet memes, the cognitive elaboration required by disfluent internet memes leads to emotional processing unfolding over an extended period.