Center for Health and Risk Communication: James Dillard (Penn State)
Fall 2017 Distinguished Speaker for the Center for Health and Risk Communication
Title: Alarm Calls in Homo Sapiens: A new theory of warning messages
Bio: James Price Dillard is a Distinguished Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Penn State University. He is a former Editor of Human Communication Research and co-editor of The Persuasion Handbook (with M. Pfau and L. Shen), a Fellow of the International Communication Association and the recipient of the first John E. Hunter Award for Meta-Analysis. Dillard’s scholarly interests focus on how communication produces change in the opinions and behaviors of others with special emphasis on the role of emotion. The Alarm Call Theory considers how warning messages induce fear and how the dynamic properties of that emotion produce persuasion.
